Chapter XII

Transition to the End of All Philosophy

 

 

The love of wisdom is the least that one can possess; wisdom for man the highest —and hence transcendent. Transcendental philosophy is the progression from the latter to the former.

      The final end of all knowledge is to know oneself in the highest practical reason. [Kt9:21.155-6]

 

1. Kant’s Return to Immediate Experience: The Three Transitions

       Kant’s Opus Postumum [Kt9], as we saw in Chapter XI, is much more than just a series of jumbled footnotes to or revisions of a transitional argument Kant had insufficiently developed in his earlier works, as Förster claims. Rather, it is Kant’s attempt to complete the architectonic structure of his Sys­tem. The only way he can do this is to reveal as clearly as possible ‘the idea of the whole’ as a transition that itself consists of multiple transitions.[1] Förster is right, therefore, to recognize the impor­tance of transitional arguments in Kt9, but wrong to limit them to one type. As we shall see in this chapter, Kant dis­cusses at least three distinct types of transition in Kt9. Each in its own way brings us to a point that marks the end—both in the sense of ‘purpose’ or ‘aim’ and in the sense of ‘finishing point’—of philosophy as such. By requiring us to accept a brute fact in silent recognition of its transcendent presence, each transition puts us in touch with the highest expression of Critical mysti­cism.

       After this introductory section, this chapter’s account of the content of Kt9 begins where I believe Kant himself was planning to begin his book: with a discussion of the idea of God as rooted in the categorical imperative, consid­ered as philosophy’s moral end.[2] XII.3 then deals with the idea of the world as rooted in the universal presence of an underlying, unknowable substance, identified by Kant as ‘ether’ or ‘caloric’. This is followed by a discussion in XII.4 of what I believe was Kant’s main goal in Kt9: to show how the presence of human beings in the world serves to unify the otherwise opposing ideas of God and the world. That section concludes both the chap­ter and this second volume of the Kant’s System of Perspectives series with some reflec­tions on how philosophers can cope with the ‘end’ of philosophy as so announced. It also serves as a transition to KSP3, where the perspectival para­digm will be used to interpret the nature and limits of Kant’s idea of the world and how it gives rise to the metaphysics of science.

       Kant’s critics in the last decade of his life presented him with what is still often regarded as the most difficult problem raised by his theory of knowledge in Kt1: is the object that affects us in the experience of sense-perception an em­pirical object or is it the thing in itself? Kant-interpreters then and ever since have tended to divide themselves into three camps based on their response to this issue:[3] (1) the phenomenalism or idealism of contempo­raries such as Maimon, Fichte, and J.S. Beck, later defended by the ‘Marburg’ school, re­garded only phenomenal affection as valid; (2) the noumenalism of contempo­raries such as J. Schulze, later defended by the ‘Heidelberg’ school, regarded only noumenal affection as valid; and (3) later interpreters such as Vaihinger and Adickes regarded both as valid, and therefore devised the infamous theory of ‘double affection’ as an interpretation of Kant’s view [Ad20:18; q.i. Ke23: 612-3].

       What has never been fully appreciated is that Kant himself was developing his own answer in Kt9, an answer that follows a fourth way: considered from the perspective of our immediate experience of the sense-object, neither the thing in itself nor the empirical object affects us, for this very distinction arises only from reflection on such immediate experience. Kant’s answer to the question, in other words, is to say that in immediate experience the object (under whatever name it assumes, whether Self, God, Sense-Object, Reason, etc.) affects itself. ‘The first act of reason is consciousness’ [Kt9:21.105], and out of this initial act all reflective perspectives eventually arise. From the transcendental perspective the thing in itself must be posited as the source of the material of perception; from the empirical perspective the empiri­cal object must be so regarded; but in our pre-perspectival immediate experi­ence, neither of these provides an accurate explanation. Kt9 can be interpreted properly only if we recognize Kant’s intention to counter the various diverging tendencies with a truly Critical answer to this question. That he is no longer starting with the transcendental object (i.e., with ‘experience in general’), but is showing how it arises out of experience in particular (i.e., immediate experi­ence), is clear when he says: ‘The first act of thinking contains a principle of ... the self-affecting subject in a system of ideas which contain merely the formal [factors] of the advance [from particular experience] to experience in general.’[4]

       Kt9’s single, all-encompassing principle, serving as a vortex that every­thing else flows into, is expressed in a variety of ways—e.g., as ‘Self’, ‘God’, ‘Nature’ (the ‘Sense-Object’), or ‘Morally-Practical Reason’—but its most fundamental characteristic is always the same: self-creativity. This ‘one princi­ple’ of Zoroaster, repeatedly mentioned in Kt9, is sometimes associated with Spinoza’s ‘principle of intuiting all things in God’. As we saw in X.4, Kant showed interest in this principle as early as 1770 [Kt19:410]; now he continues to toy with it, reformulating it as ‘the capacity of thought as inner intuition to develop out of itself’ [Ad20:730, q.i. Ke23:640; s.a. Kt9:21.15]—i.e., as the capacity for self-transcendence that alone gives rise to knowledge.[5] Kant explains in Kt9:21.152 that God should be represented ‘not as a being in the world but [as] the pure idea of self-constitution, similar to the pure intelligence of the subject itself.—The highest intelligence.’[6] Similarly, he says ‘I am an object of myself and of my representations. That there is something else outside me is my own product. I make myself.... We make everything ourselves.’[7] When Kant talks in this way about self-creativity, we must keep in mind that he is no longer assuming a reflective perspective of any sort, but is attempting to speak about the unspeakable (i.e., immediate experience) and its relation to the standpoints and perspectives adopted throughout his entire System. From this new ‘standpoint’ no distinctions can be made at all: everything is One. Even the distinction between reality and appearance breaks down. The immediate experi­ence of the Self is all there is. As we shall see, the only way to speak about the unspeakable is to use apparent contradictions (e.g., in the form A = -A), such as ‘the object [or thing in itself] is the subject’ [e.g., 22.414-5(181)] or ‘Synthetic and analytic’ [22.88(193); cf. Pa00a:78-85].

       The common assumption that Kant thought this spontaneous and ‘self-creative character’ belongs to ‘the noumenal self’ [Ke23:627; s.a. Wa72:163] can now be seen to be entirely incorrect. The noumenal self is a construction arising out of our human consciousness as a ‘world-being’, or ‘being-in-the-world’ (Weltwessen),[8] and only the latter can be said to be self-creative. For Kant, immediate experience is therefore not a mystical intuition (at least, not one that can give rise to empirical knowledge), not a noumenal ‘act’, not an action subjected to moral laws, and not a subjective feeling; it is what gives rise to all of these—the nonreflective, undetermined, raw material we use to con­struct various types of reflective experience. It is the ‘birth’ of reason itself, through which the essential self-creative nature of God is expressed: ‘The concept of [God] is not that of substance—i.e., of a being which exists independent of my thought—but the idea (one’s own creation ...) of a reason which constitutes itself into a thought-object [an ‘ideal’]’ [Kt9:21.27(231)]. This self-creative core of human nature can be regarded as the source of all perspectives and of every element in Kant’s entire System of Perspectives.

       The sharp distinction in systemt between the transcendent material of a knowable object (i.e., the unknowable thing in itself) and the formal unity imposed by the transcendental (not noumenal) subject (i.e., by the ‘I’ of apperception) is valid only from the theoretical standpoint. But if we take our starting point not from rational faith in the thing in itself, as posited by transcendental reflection, but from our own undifferentiated immediate experience (the human individual as a world-being), then all such distinctions must be regarded as derivative. From this standpoint of immediacy Kant is therefore able to say that the self posits both itself and its object, and in so doing provides the means for avoiding solipsism: by establishing the potential reflective perspectives, it arises out of the nonreflective ignorance (mystics sometimes call it the knowing ignorance) of immediate experience. This is done by dividing the sense-object into subjective and objective components: ‘The thing in itself is not another object, but another mode of making oneself into an object’ [Kt9:22.415(181)]. But in immediate experience the thing in itself and the subject are not yet distinguished, for ‘the thing in itself is the subject which I make into the object’ [s.a. 22.43-4(178-9)].

       Such comments do not imply that Kant has abandoned the unknowable ‘transcendental absolute’ in favor of ‘the absolute of autonomous thought’, as Vleeschauwer suggests [Vl62:189], but only that he recognizes that the former gives way to the latter when transcendental Critique gives way to metaphysics, where autonomous thought is recognized as absolute only because the transcen­dent absolute is immanent in immediate experience. That Kant has not aban­doned the thing in itself to Fichte and the idealists, but has merely changed his standpoint, is evident from the fact that he affirms the Critical doctrine at numerous points in Kt9.[9] When he says ‘transcen­dental philosophy is an idealism: namely that the subject constitutes itself’ [21.85], he is not denying the objective reality of the phenomenal world, as established in systemt and as presupposed throughout all the nontheological sections of Kt9;[10] rather, he is attempting to describe the prereflective source of the very distinction between phenomenon and noumenon. This is why he says in Kt9:21.552(81) that ‘idealism ... belongs to another branch of philosophy, with which we are not here concerned’—i.e., idealism belongs to critique, whereas Kt9 belongs to metaphysics [see KSP1:III.4]. Because Kt9 also belongs to systemj, ‘the dis­tinction between transcendental and metaphysical finally collapses’ [Fö89:298].

       This original act of self-creative and self-legislative reason is what first produces the Kantian ideas of reason: God, the world (and freedom from it), and humanity (with an immortal destiny).[11] Our immediate consciousness of human duties gives rise to the idea of God; our immediate consciousness of sense-objects gives rise to the idea of the world; and our immediate experience of our own self, as a self-creative sense-object, gives rise to the idea of the human person as an immortal ‘being-in-the-world’.[12] This ini­tial synthetic act thus establishes the framework for the reflective perspectives that pattern Kant’s philosophical System: the world (-) is opposed to God (+) just as systemt is to systemp; and the former pair is synthesized by the human person (x), just as systemj synthesizes the latter pair.[13]  By revising the content of Figure VI.1 in terms of these correlations, we can present the relationship between Kt9’s three ideas, the ideas as introduced in Kt1 (shown in brackets inside the triangle), and their origin in different types of immediate experience, as follows:

 

 

Figure XII.1:

The Original Synthesis of Ideas in Immediate Experience

 

Within the framework established by these ideas, Kant hopes in Kt9 to con­struct a ‘complete system of the possibility of the absolute whole of experience, the ‘grounding’ of which ‘by means of the a priori principle of the possibility of experience in general’ was the purpose of the Critical, or ‘Transcendental’ wing of his System.[14] The properly metaphysical wing having already been elaborated in its application to natural science (Kt3) and morality (Kt6), all that remains for Kt9 is the task of unifying these in a final metaphysical system of immediate experience. In systemt, as well as in the other Critical systems, the ideas function primarily as regulative concepts, but here in Kt9 they ‘are not mere concepts but laws of thinking which the subject prescribes itself’ [21.93]. They ‘give the subject-matter [der Stoff] for synthetic a priori laws by means of concepts, and so not merely do they go forth from metaphysics, they even ground the transcendental-philosophy’ [21.20].

       This sharp opposition between the ideas of God and the world (or nature) is presupposed throughout all of Kant’s writings. Yet the two ideas are often used ambiguously, making it unclear ‘whether Kant, in phrases like “the intelligible substratum” is talking about God or about the world in itself’ [Bu82:91n]. Thus Dister argues that Kant confuses the cosmological and theological ideas in Kt1 by portraying both as ‘the source of purposiveness in the world’ [Di72:269n; see e.g., Kt1:727]. Kant seems, however, to have viewed God and nature as two sides of the same coin (the coin of ‘totality’): ‘God is a kind of mirror image of the “intelligible sub­stratum” of the world’ [Bu82:91; cf. Go71:66-7]. Kant often talks about nature’s ‘will’ in much the same way as he talks about God’s will [e.g., Kt32:365,367]. Despland discusses the close relationship between God and nature in the form of ‘Providence’: especially in his writings on the philosophy of history, Kant develops the notion of ‘a Nature which is Providence, the mother of mankind, the mainspring of progress, and the guarantee of order’ [De73:7; s.a. 57,73, 90-5,274]. ‘Kant attributed no moral indifference to this Nature. Its purposes are normally wise and they are good for us men’ [47]. Despland quotes George Vlachos’ apt comment that for Kant ‘freedom does not rise over against nature but is born in nature’ [q.i. 48]. Although the interpenetration of God and nature is not always clear in Kant’s theoretical and practical works, his intention to establish such a position becomes more clear in those works that assume the judicial standpoint. And in Kt9 more than any of the others, Kant attempts to work out the details of this interpenetration.

       At an early stage in Kt9[15] Kant distinguishes between three types of transi­tion that will occupy his attention in this final work. Specifying the book(s) in Kant’s System that correspond to each type, we can summarize them as fol­lows: from Kt3 to physics; from physics to Kt1 (assuming that by ‘transcen­den­tal philosophy’ Kant is referring to its Critical foundation); and from Kt1 to both Kt3 and Kt6 (‘the system of nature and freedom’). These three transitions, taken together, give rise to what Kant calls ‘cosmotheology’: ‘the universal connection of the living forces of all things in reciprocal relation: God and the world.’ In the latter case Kant is taking ‘God and the world’ as one idea [Kt9: 21.19(205)], whose unity constitutes ‘[t]he highest standpoint of transcen­den­tal philosophy’ [21.23(206)]. That Kant regards his investiga­tion of these transitions as a part of his third, judicial system, with its more teleological and empirical orientation, is evident from comments such as that his goal will be to construct ‘a world-system (according to purposes)’ [22.193(53), e.a.], based on a ‘schematism of the faculty of judgment for the moving forces of matter’ [21.291(Co60b:381), e.a.] that enables us to anticipate ‘the empirical investi­ga­tion of Nature’.[16] If Kt9 were meant to be part of the theoretical wing of Kant’s System, and hence to adopt the standpoint of Kt1-Kt3 rather than that of Kt7 and Kt8, then its world-system would surely be mechanical, not purpose-driven.

       In what follows I shall demonstrate how the paradoxes referred to as ‘transitions’ in Kt9 can each be resolved and/or explained most clearly by inter­preting their epistemological status in terms of analytic a posteriority. This will serve not only to provide us with a much-needed ‘idea of the whole’ for inter­preting Kt9, but also to confirm the conjecture made in KSP1:III.4, that Kt9 is the final, synthetic step in Kant’s third (‘judicial’) system and as such occupies the ‘doctrinal’ position cor­responding to the analytic a posteriori [cf. Figs. III.9(c) and IV.2 in KSP1]. As Kant puts it in Kt9:21.478(42), ‘the transition from metaphysics to physics’ moves ‘from ... the concept of a matter in gener­al’, which as pure concept would properly be regarded as analytic, ‘to the sys­tem of moving forces’, including various ‘empirical principles’ [21.482(43); s.a. 22.141(47)] that can be known only a posteriori. As we shall see, Kant’s analysis of the resulting ‘system of the universal doctrine of forces’—like that of the doctrinal systems proposed in Kt3 and Kt6—would have been much more clear had he identified the doctrine’s status as analytic a posteriori.

 

2. God: The Categorical Imperative as Philosophy’s Moral End

       The main focus of Kant’s attention in the sections of Kt9 dealing with the idea of God (i.e., with the moral aspect of the ‘transition from metaphysics       to tran­scendental philosophy’ [Kt9:22.129(209)]) is on the philosophical implications of the phenomenon we experience as the categorical imperative. Kant repeatedly stresses in these sections [see e.g., 22:104-5(198-9)] the direct or immediate connection between the proposition ‘There is a God’ and our awareness of the categorical imperative. Sometimes he goes far beyond a mere reference to the proposition, as when he says ‘our reason expresses [the moral law] through the divine’ [22.104(198), e.a.] and the idea of God ‘is the feeling of the presence of the divine in man’ [22.18ok]. Elsewhere [e.g., 22.123(205)] he adds: ‘The idea of [the categorical imperative] is that of a substance which ... is not subordinated to a classifi­ca­tion of human reason.’ A few paragraphs later he comes right out and calls God ‘a personal substance’ [22.125(206)]. God is ‘the idea of an omnipotent moral being’ who ‘is both all-powerful with regard to nature’ and ‘universally commanding for freedom’; we must regard God not merely as a ‘generic concept’ but as ‘an individual (a thoroughly determined being)’ [22.127-8(207)]—perhaps even ‘a threefold person’ [21.29(232)].

       In Wa72:166 Ward expounds Kt9:22.118 to mean ‘God is a Personality, not external to man as a separate substance, but within man.’ But he downplays the importance of such claims, interpreting Kant as referring merely to ‘the legislative capacity of originative reason, and not [to] the sort of subjectivity that belongs to human persons.’[17] Kant repeats this notion on numerous occasions, such as in Kt9:21.19(225), where he appears to be hinting at a synthesis between systemt and systemp: ‘The concept of God is that of a being as the highest cause of world-beings and as a person.’ And Kt9:21.48(Su71: 125) says: ‘The concept of God is that of a personality of a thought-being, or ideal Being which reason creates for itself. Man is also a person, but yet which as sense-object belongs to the world.’ So a key difference between God and a human person is that only the latter has a physical body. Such comments are likely to mislead us unless we keep in mind that ‘reason’ for Kant refers not to a property possessed by each individual, but to a transcendent power or reality that all persons participate in and should submit to. This seems to be what Webb has in mind [We26:192] when he interprets such claims to mean that ‘[i]n recognizing the Law we find ourselves in God’s presence; ... for the Law itself is the revelation of his Personality.’ From this new standpoint, ‘the Moral Law’ just is ‘the Presence of God ... immediately revealed’ [199], ‘a Presence [that is] “closer to us than breathing and nearer than hands and feet”’ [200].

       Greene agrees that ‘Kant’s thought tended always to conceive of God in terms of the basic concept of personality’, rather than that of the (far more static) ‘Unconditioned’ or ‘Absolute’ [Gr34:lxviii]. Yet England, after noting in En29:192n that ‘Kant frequently describes God as a person’ in Kt9, com­plains that ‘Kant ... had a very imperfect notion of what was implied in the notion of personality’—the main problem being that Kant’s view seems too ‘static’. This is hardly fair to Kant, for he describes God dynamically as a ‘living’ substance who, like human beings, ‘is capable of rights’ [Kt9:22.48(210)]. Personality in the human sense (e.g., involving duties as well as rights) ‘cannot be attributed to the Deity’; for God’s personality is ‘omnipotent’, ‘omniscient’, and ‘omni­benevolent’. Kant’s earlier claim in Kt8:28(23) that ‘the moral law ... is person­ality itself’, so that a human being’s ‘predisposition to personality is the capacity for respect for the moral law’ [27(22-3)], need not be regarded as static, provided we associate the moral law with the living voice of conscience within us (e.g., the ‘holy Ghost’ [22.60(217)]), rather than taking it as a fixed logical principle.

      The ‘personal’ in itself is a nonreflective mode of being; it is the ‘I’ that gives rise to all reflective perspectives. As such, we could regard the third stage of any judicial system as adopting the ‘personal perspective’—i.e., the perspec­tive whose task is to determine the necessary conditions (principles) that govern personal experience. Two such conditions would be that personality is inher­ently spiritual, yet manifested in a material form. Thus, ‘God is a spirit’ [Kt9: 22.58(215)], and this divine person ‘is immanent in the human spirit’ through the moral law,[18] yet also present in nature [22.61-2, e.a.; s.a. 22.57(215)]: ‘What is God? —He is the unique being, unconditionally commanding in the moral-practical relation (i.e., according to the categorical imperative), exercis­ing all power over nature. This is already in its concept a unique [being]: ... the very thought of him is at the same time belief in him and in his personality.’

       Kant goes so far as to regard the moral imperative as the voice of God in the human soul:[19] ‘The categorical imperative ... leads directly to God, yes, serves as a pledge of His reality’; ‘the virtuous individual experiences directly, in the categorical imperative, the voice of God and ... apprehends Him, with the certainty of a personal faith, as a transcendental reality’; for ‘in morally-practical reason and in the categorical imperative God reveals himself.’[20] Schrader appeals to the perspectival character of Kant’s System in order to explain why this does not contradict systemp’s view of the moral law as independent from all external determination (including God’s) [Sc51a:239-40]: ‘It is from the standpoint of religion that the moral law is to be regarded as the “voice of God.” The passages from [Kt9] in which Kant makes such assertions are perfectly consistent with his critical position.’

       Interestingly, Kant refers to ‘instinct’ in Kt63:111 as ‘that voice of God which is obeyed by all animals.’ He goes on [112] to suggest that the story of Adam and Eve is the story of how human beings first came to ‘do violence to the voice of nature’—here equivalent to the ‘voice of God’ in instinct—through ‘the first attempt at free choice’.[21] This account of reason’s ‘birth’ suggests that our free reason is the very thing that puts up a barrier between us and God, which in turn implies reason must in some sense ‘die’ or come to its final resting point before God’s voice becomes fully audible to us again. We shall return to this provocative suggestion at the close of this chapter, though a detailed treatment of this theme will be given only in KSP4.

       Kant’s definitions and descriptions of God in Kt9 consistently link God to practical reason. The claim that ‘[m]oral-practical reason ... leads to the concept of God’ [22.116(200)] seems quite consistent with the moral argument that plays an integral part in systemp. Likewise, the notion that God is ‘a being which has only rights and no duties’ [22.120(203); s.a. 21.9-11(218-9); 22.48-9(210);], who is ‘obli­gat­ing’ but ‘never obligated’ [22.127(207); s.a. 22.124 (205)] holds no surprises. That God ‘has unrestricted power over nature and freedom under laws of reason’ does seem, however, to be going further.[22] Clearly Kant sees God as an active force in the world. But what kind of force? Whatever else this force may be [see XII.3], it is personal, for as we have seen, Kant repeatedly insists on viewing God as a ‘person’ [e.g., 22.119-20 (102-3)]. Sometimes he borrows biblical imagery to describe this relationship: ‘In ... the idea of God as a moral being, we live, and move and have our being’ [22.118(201); s.a. 22.55(214); cf. Acts 17:28]. But at its most extreme, Kant’s tendency to connect God with practical reason appears to lead him to identify the two: ‘The concept of God ... is not a hypothetical thing but pure practical reason itself in its per­sonality’ [22.118(201-2)]. ‘There is a God for there is a categorical imperative’ [22.106(Su71:120); cf. 104-5ok].

       Some interpreters have taken such claims at face value, concluding that Kant’s God, especially in Kt9, is indeed identical to reason. Such an interpre­tation has an element of truth in it: the foregoing quotes demonstrate that Kant does regard God as immanent in the web of a priori conditions that reason uses to bring true knowledge, good action, and beautiful purposes into the grasp of human beings. Sometimes he refers to ‘the categorical imperative in me’ in close proximity to statements that allude to the meaning of his own first name: ‘Est deus in nobis’ (‘God is in us’, the Hebrew meaning of ‘Immanuel’) [22.129-30(209); s.a. 22.54(213)]. When Kant himself raises the issue of whether there is anything real that corresponds to our concept of God [22.117(201)]—that is, anything that would distinguish God from human reason or extend beyond the categorical imperative—he usually avoids any direct answer, calling this issue ‘problematic’; but he clarifies elsewhere that this being ‘is different from me’ even though I become aware of it only ‘in me’ [21.25(229)]. In some sense, we participate in the life of God whenever we use our rational capacities properly. Yet, to regard this intimate participation as a complete identification is to ignore Kant’s equally important emphasis on God’s transcen­dence [see V.1]. For, although Kant always insists that God abides by the moral law, he does not therefore believe God is subordinate to it; rather, ‘the categorical imperative is a command of God’ [22.128(208), e.a.]. That Kant does not intend in such comments to make an absolute identification is demonstrated further in AIV.4.

       God may be present in our reason, but our reason is not coextensive with God’s nature. For God must also have some reality over and above the whole System of Perspectives. Despland accurately portrays these two aspects when he says [De73:146] ‘Kant’s moral theism secures a subjective interior approach to our thinking about God and secures a transcendent, religiously available God.’ Just as Copernicus derived his theory concerning the movements of the planets from the hypothesis that a motionless sun lies at the center of the astronomical system, so also Kant derives his theory concerning the meaning of human per­spectives on truth, goodness, and beauty from the hypothesis that a real, tran­scendent God (the ultimate thing in itself, ‘outside myself’ [21.15(222); 21.22 (228)]) emits the pure (but unknowable) ‘light’ of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty from the suprarational, perspectiveless center of the philosophical System [see e.g., Kt65:47]. That Kant regards all this as happening ‘within us’ (i.e., in our immediate experience) prompts Weber (in his History of Philosophy) to claim even ‘the three Critiques culminate in absolute spiritualism’ [q.i. Ca02:257].

       KSP1:V.1-4 demonstrated that Kant’s philosophical System begins with a special sort of ‘theoretical faith’ in the existence (or ‘reality’) of the thing in itself. We can now see that the System ends where it began, only now with a deep awareness that this faith can only be validated through what is usually called a religious experience.[23] A mystical experience is the ultimate way of validating the initial, theoretical faith required to enter the System; without such an experience, all theological reflection is groundless. Whereas in systemp Kant had argued that morality provides us with reasons for belief in God, ‘he now ... suggests that the moral experience itself may legitimately be regarded as an experience of the Divine.’[24] Or as Norburn puts it in No73:439, Kt9 tries to show ‘that our awareness of God goes along with, not is merely postulated by, our awareness of the moral law.’

       This expression of the consciousness of moral obligation as an immediate consciousness of God seems to be operating as a new way of proving God’s existence.[25] As such, Adickes [Ad20] interprets it as a repudiation of the moral proof given in the fourth stage of systemp—a view often echoed uncritically.[26] Although Kemp Smith agrees with Adickes, stating that in Kt9 Kant ‘acknowl­edges the inadequacy of his professedly practical, but really theoretical, proof of God’s existence, advocating in its place a proof of a more consistently moral character’ [Ke23:610], he later admits that Kant ‘nowhere, in explicit terms, avows this change of standpoint’ [638; cf. Wo70:10-3]. The former comment not only reads theoretical motives into Kant’s moral argument that simply are not there,[27] it also fails to take account of the fact that the argument in Kt9 is not essentially moral, but judicial, if not existential. As Schrader explains, Adickes supports his position with three points: ‘(1) that Kant failed to restate [‘the moral argument in the Opus Postumum’]; (2) that he declared that no proof of God’s existence can be offered; (3) that he stated that God is directly and immediately revealed in the categorical imperative’ [Sc51a:235]. Let us take a closer look at each of these points in turn.

       The first point is merely negative and could just as well indicate ‘that Kant was quite satisfied with the formulations of the argument which he already had’ [Wa72:161]. This alternative is supported by the otherwise grossly inconsistent fact that Kant continues to support the general idea of a moral proof [see e.g., Kt9:22.60(217); 22.121(203)], regarding ‘the knowledge of all duties as divine commands’ as having ‘the same force as if a real world-judge were assumed’ [22.125(206)]. That he does not restate the details of the proof does not mean he no longer accepts it,[28] but only that what is appropriate for practical critique may be irrelevant for the judicial metaphysics of Kt9. The second point is like­wise easily rebutted by anyone who is sensi­tive to Kant’s use of the principle of per­spective. Kt9’s rejection of theological proofs ‘is entirely consonant with Kant’s Critical position, wherein he does not regard the moral argument as a theoretical proof’ [Wa72:161; s.a. Sc51a:236-40]. Kant apparently assumes the reader is familiar enough with his System of Perspectives to know he is refer­ring only to the inadequacy of all theoretical proofs. When the first two points are accounted for perspectivally, the third point loses its problematic character: an immediate apprehension of God is not a problem as long as we remember that it is valid only from the standpoint of judicial metaphysics [see X.3].

       Against Adickes’ third point, Schrader argues that certain passages in Kt9 ‘would seem to make it impossible to conclude that Kant had come to accept a personal subjective faith in God based upon a direct revelation in the categorical imperative’ [Sc51a:237]. The passage he quotes, however, states that the ideas of freedom and God ‘cannot be exhibited and proven directly (immediately) but only indirectly through a mediating principle: ... namely, in the human, moral/ practical reason’ [Kt9:21.30]. This simply means the immediate experience of God through practical reason cannot serve as a direct theoretical proof; Kant is not here denying or contradicting his claims elsewhere in Kt9 that our con­sciousness of God is direct and immediate.[29] Thus Adickes’ third point is valid, but provides no evidence that Kant intends to repudiate the moral argument proposed in systemp. Because of their lack of attention to the principle of perspective, the positions represented by Adickes and Schrader both fail to take account of the crucial fact that the argument in systemp is significantly different from that in Kt9: the former argues for the need to postulate God in order to make sense out of our morality; the latter argues that God is, in fact, present in our immediate experience. There is therefore no good reason to regard the two arguments as mutually exclusive; both can be accepted, provided we distinguish clearly between their respective standpoints.

       The distinctive character of Kant’s argument in Kt9 can be brought out still further by examining its epistemological status. I shall do this in more detail in XII.3 when considering Kant’s claims regarding the mysterious substance that under­lies and unifies our immediate experience of nature. At this point a few brief suggestions will suffice. Copleston uses the phrase ‘religious a priori’ to describe ‘the idea that man is by nature oriented to God or open to the Transcendent’.[30] Kant would reject such a claim, not because he denies our theocentric orientation—he does not [see I.3]—but because it is not part of our nature in the same way the synthetic a priori conditions for knowledge are. Unlike space, time, and causality, as well as freedom and the moral law, we do not find ‘God’ in our reason as a constituent element, epistemologically prior to all experience; rather, we make it a part of our nature, in response to and in proportion with our encounter with transcendent reality. That is, our openness to God is ‘by nature’ in a very different way: it is an a posteriori response,[31] whereby we impose the concept of the transcendent (analytically) onto our experience. The analyticity of this imposition explains why Kant says in Kt9:21.153(Su71:133): ‘It is absurd to ask whether there is a God.’ To ask such a question, from Kt9’s existential standpoint, is tantamount to asking: ‘Do I exist?’ For a basic ‘self-perceiving’ (Selbstanschauung—i.e., ‘making one­self the object of one’s own perception’) lies at the root of our awareness of God. Describing its status as analytic yet a posteriori can help us appreciate why Kant speaks of it in such a paradoxical way [see AIV.4]. Although he does not express his position so clearly, he does hint at it on several occasions, as when he refers in Kt9:22.442(163) to our ‘self-intuition’ as both analytic and synthetic [s.a. 465(131)].

       Does Kant’s appeal to a direct experience of God merely take us back to the preKantian practice of philosophers calling on God to fill the ‘gaps’ they could not fill in with empirical evidence or rational proof? No. The difference between Kant’s appeal to God and the typical ‘God of the gaps’ approach is that the latter treats God as an element in the system, so that our knowledge of God is regarded as absolutely certain, whereas Kant appeals to a person’s experience of God, interpreted through an act of faith, as a paradoxical awareness of the presence of transcendence within the world—a purely subjective validation of a System that begins and ends with a recognition of objective ignorance of the transcendent.[32] To some, this may be an inadequate, intellectually dissatisfying way to conclude such an impressive philosophical System. But to Kant it is the only way to be philosophical without letting our philosophy rob us of what is most authentically human. As Norburn puts it in No73:442, ‘when we have acquired the humility to accept [the] truth [that ‘our situation’ is ‘indefensibly human’], then all our thinking, says Kant, centers our minds upon the idea of God. Can we ask for more?’

 

3. The World: Matter’s Living Force as Philosophy’s Technical End

       The main focus of Kant’s attention in the sections of Kt9 dealing with the idea of the world (i.e., with the transitions between physics, Kt1, and Kt3) is on the philosophical implications of the phenomenon we experience as heat. In keeping with a common conviction among physicists of his day, Kant believed this and other phenomena require the postulation of a hidden substance, called ‘caloric’ or ‘ether’[33]—i.e., ‘a matter for which all bodies are permeable, but which is itself expansive’ [Kt9:22.193(53)]. He regards ‘caloric’ as the ‘presupposition’ that ‘an internally moving matter’ exists and fills ‘the whole of cosmic space’.[34] This ‘inward’ undulation or ‘vibration’ does not as such expand the material object, but vibrates ‘in the space which it occupies’ [22.142(48)]. Kant maintains that ‘the function of its activity is not [merely to generate] warmth’; instead, ‘heat may only be one particular effect of its moving forces’ [21.228-9(76); s.a. 21.584-5(92), 21.602(96)]. The resulting ‘idea of the whole of moving forces ... is the basis of ... matter’ [21.581(90)]; we experience it as ‘a sense-object’ [e.g., 21.582(91)]. Kant sees this universal and never-ending movement at the inner core of all matter as leading to ‘the concept of an animated matter’ [21.184(59)]. That is, ‘the totality of our world’, taken as itself ‘an organic body’, can be thought of as being alive![35]

       Although Kant unfortunately does not explicitly connect the basic energy of nature with his other concerns in Kt9, he does provide us with enough hints to develop a coherent reconstruction. For example, he poses the basic problem of this aspect of his Final Transition project as follows [Kt9:22.120(203)]: ‘There is a God in the soul of man. The question is whether he is also in nature.’ That Kant wants to encourage an affirmative answer to this question seems beyond reasonable doubt, given the weight of textual evidence. In this passage, after reminding us that ‘God and the world contain the totality of exis­tence’ [22.124(205)], Kant draws an explicit analogy between God and ‘the ether’: ‘God regarded as a natural being is [also] a hypothetical being, assumed for the explanation of appearances’ [22.126(206)]. Indeed, by taking such tan­talizing hints seriously and regarding cosmotheology (God-in-the-world) as a key ex­pression of Kt9’s aim [see 21.17(224)], we can interpret Kant’s long and hard focus on the topic of ether/caloric as an expression of his belief that this ‘living force’ [e.g., 22.142(48)] is a real manifestation of God’s fiery presence in the natural world.

       Not just the matter that constitutes the bodies of plants and animals [Kt9: 22.210(3)], but all matter is, in this metaphorical sense, alive. Kant thus portrays the hidden, internal side of matter as endlessly vibrating in ways that do not expand the space it fills in the visible world, but which alone explains how heat can come about. ‘These pulsations constitute a living force’.[36] Despite appear­ances to the contrary, this view does not require Kant to change or reject any of his Critical doctrines; rather, it merely indicates Kt9’s change of standpoint. For just as the thing in itself is unknowable in systemt, so also we are ‘incapable of knowing [the ether] and its weight by any experience’ [21:387-8(13)]; despite the crucial role they play in the transition, both ether and caloric are ‘imponderable’ (i.e., they lack density).

       Kant shows special interest in the force of gravity, because (unlike ordinary forces that act externally to objects in order to propel them into motion) gravity ‘acts upon the inside of matter immediately’ [Kt9:21.308(24)]. Likewise, to account for our ‘sensation of warmth’, Kant posits at one point a sixth sense, ‘an inward one’, in contrast to the ‘five outer senses’ [22.343 [112]). Given Kant’s insistence that ‘a highest—namely, originally indepen­dent—understanding’ underlies the ‘one universal [matter]’ [21.183(60)], we are justified in regarding such comments as yet further evidence of Kant’s interest in highlighting the natural basis of God’s immediate presence. Indeed, the foregoing quote is followed by a single word that ends a section: ‘agitatio.’ This seems to be Kant’s shorthand way of indicating his intention to portray God as underlying the material world as its agitating force, a primal fire that shakes up and warms the entire universe. As Sullivan puts it, Kant regards ‘phlogiston, the principle of fire’ as ‘[t]he most common example’ of a phenomenon that requires us to posit God as ‘a hypothetical being’ in order to explain its occurrence [Su71:127].

       Physics, it seems, is revealing to us at its very root the same ‘Immanuel’ (‘God in us’) we find at the foundation of true religion: ‘The primum movens is not locomotive but rather internal’ [Kt9:22.200(55)], for ‘this matter is ... to be assumed as the prime mover ..., subjectively’ [21.553(82)]. Since ‘intention’ cannot be a property of matter, Kant reasons, we must suppose an immaterial basis for the unifying force that makes organisms what they are—what some would call ‘a world-soul’, though this can never be demonstrated [22.548(85); cf. 22.100(197)]. Indeed, Kant warns on a number of occasions that he is not supporting the notion of a ‘world-soul’ [e.g., 21.18-9(224-5); 21.92(252]; rather, his view is that our ‘[m]oral-practical reason is one of the moving forces of nature and of all sense-objects.’ [22.105(199)]. That he has an analogical connection in mind here is suggested in Kt9:21.153: ‘To say absolutely that a God is ... is analogous with the propositions that space is and time is. All these objects of knowledge are mere products of our own self-made representations (ideas) among which that of God is the uppermost.’ This analogy confirms the view of God proposed in Figure V.3, whereby God is viewed as being immanent (omnipresent) to our moral reason in the same way space and time are to our experience of the phenomenal world. Kant sometimes expresses this so forcefully that he seems almost to be forgetting its analogical status [Ad20: 827(We26:199)]: ‘The idea of that which the human Reason itself makes of the universe is the active representation of God, not as the substance of a separate personality outside of me, but as the thought of a personality within me’. Elsewhere Kant expresses this ‘panentheism’ even more explicitly: ‘space is the phenomenon of the divine omnipresence.’[37]

       Kant’s reason for referring in a number of Kt9 passages to Spinoza’s view that we ‘intuit all things [Sache] ... in God’ [e.g., 21.50-1(241-2); s.a. Kt19: 410] is not easy to discern. These jottings may simply be reminders of a position he intends to refute later on. Such an interpretation could find backing from Hamann’s report that Kant ‘had never properly studied Spinoza’ [Ba03: xxxv] and that ‘Kant could never make anything of Spinoza, though he had many long conversations on the subject with his intimate friend Kraus.’ Yet I believe there is more to such references than this. For Spinoza’s formula expresses in a nutshell a view Kant himself seems to be elaborating throughout Kt9 and serves as a significant means of expressing the cul­mi­nating step of Kt9’s tantalizing task: to unite together the two most diverse human ideas: God and the world. For by ‘things’ Kant is referring not to the abstract epistemological construct of the thing in itself (Ding an sich), but to the manifold phenomena (Sache) we actually experience in the world. Kant’s point, then, seems to be that Spinoza provides us with a means of conceiving how the knowing subject unites God and the world in every act of intuition.

       Here again we have met the sort of paradox that typifies all the transitions, with their character as the synthesis of a pair of opposites: the living forces of matter are alive (‘in God’), even though matter as we know it (as ‘all things’) is dead [see e.g., Kt9:475(40)]. Let us therefore examine the epistemological status of Kant’s claims regarding the mysterious substance that underlies and unifies the continuum we experience as space-time.[38] As I have argued in KSP1:IV.3-4 and elsewhere, one of Kant’s chief shortcomings was to limit his epistemological framework to three basic types of knowledge instead of recognizing the role of the analytic a posteriori as the proper status of those el­ements in his System that must be taken on faith. In an early draft for a Preface to Kt9 [21.524(36)] Kant confesses his love of architectonic in terms that reveal why he remained blind to the power of the analytic a posteri­ori:

 

As far as philosophy is concerned it is my plan—and lies ... in my natural vocation—to remain within the boundaries of what is knowable a priori: to survey, where possible, its field, and to present it as a circle (orbis), simple and unitary, that is, as a system prescribed by reason, not one conceived arbitrarily.

 

Here Kant reveals his absolute bias for the a priori—a bias that may be regarded as the single most important reason Kant’s goal remains, as we saw in Chapter XI, a tantalizing ideal that he is unable to grasp. For he has rightly identified the status of physics as an empirical science: its specific knowledge-claims must be synthetic and a posteriori. He has also rightly identified his own philosophical foundations for physics (established in Kt1-Kt3) as providing synthetic a priori principles for science. He is even right to recognize that a gap still remains between the empirical status of physics and the foundations provided in Kt3. He goes wrong only by insisting that the gap he is searching for must be filled by something a priori.

       Kant’s treatment of this problem in Kt9 shows he is aware of the paradoxi­cal nature of his search: he is looking for something that could be a priori and yet empirical at the same time. As he points out at several points, ‘the transition is a descent’ from a priori principles to the empirical [e.g., Kt9:21.476(40); s.a. 21.525(36-7)]. Kant seems well aware that he is on to something crucial to the unity and com­plete­ness of his philosophical System; but how to describe the status of this tantalizing transition repeatedly alludes his grasp.[39] For the remainder of this section I shall argue that his search for an appropriate description for all the transitions, but especially for the vital role played by ether/caloric, can be satisfied by classifying them as analytic a posteriori.

       Despite his repeated attempts to force it into his favorite, transcendental (synthetic a priori) mold, Kant elsewhere leaves no doubt as to the analytic status of his ether proof.[40] For example, he states in Kt9:21.226(74) that its principle—the principle of ‘full space’, the opposite of the Newtonian concept of ‘empty space’ [21.223-4(72-3)]—is inferred ‘according to the principle of identity’ from the impossibility of empty space [s.a. 21.228-9(75-6)]. More­over, he comes right out and calls it analytic in passages such as Kt9:21.233 (78): ‘the universally distributed caloric ... is the basis for the system of moving forces which emerges analytically, from concepts—that is, according to the rule of identity—from the principle of agreement with the possibility of experience in general.’ By referring to ‘the possibility of experience in general’ he intends, no doubt, to suggest an a priori (transcendental) origin for the ether principle. Yet he also wants to regard it as empirical—wherein, he admits, ‘ap­pears to lie a contradiction’ [e.g., 21.230(77); s.a. 21.244(79)]. Once again, he could have resolved (or at least, found a valid epistemological status to clarify) the paradoxical character of this ultimate principle by fully embracing its purely conceptual starting-point as analytic, but treating it as a regulative hypothesis that we impose onto our experience of the world, a posteriori. This would have given him a conceptual handle for describing how the concept of ether/caloric can at first be ‘a mere thought-object’ (an analytic relation between concepts), yet can come to be experienced as a real sense-object (an a posteriori relation between intuitions).[41]

       The impasse in Kant’s reasoning is caused by his unquestioned assumption that the concept of ether/caloric must be a priori in order to fulfill a significant philosophical function. Thus when he portrays the caloric essence of all matter as ‘an idea that emerge[s] from reason’ [Kt9:22.551-2(87)], he assumes this must make it a priori, even though he is quick to point out the paradoxical fact that it is also ‘to be regarded altogether as an object of experience (given).’ ‘Caloric is’, as he puts it in Kt9:21.584(91), ‘a categorically given material.’ Once we recognize its emergence from reason as analytic (contained within the categories), we are set free to regard its material givenness as an a posteriori characteristic. Along these lines Kant here admits that the concept of caloric can have a ‘hypothetical’ use whenever we use it ‘to explain certain phenomena’. (Recall that Kant’s hypothetical perspective corresponds to the analytic a posteriori stage in my reconstructed version of Kant’s architec­tonic, as depicted in Figure III.4.) Although the ether proof makes use of the concept of ‘possible experience’, as do all ordinary transcendental arguments, there is an important difference that demands a new epistemological status: the ether proofs are con­cerned not with the form (as ‘merely thought’), but with the content of possible experience [22.580(90)]—a point again suggesting they are a posteriori.

       Kant says in Kt9:22.241(57) that the four principles of transition are ‘derived analytically from the mere concept of physics.’ Earlier in the same sentence he also says the transition is ‘a priori’. But if the transition were both analytic and a priori, then it would be nothing but a merely logical operation. What Kant has in mind, however, seems to be much more subtle—some­thing akin to logic, but with deeper implications for the way we actually experience the world; he simply has no access to terminology that enables him to express such a quasi-logical status. The subtlety comes to the fore in the paradoxical note that appears at the end of the same paragraph: ‘Regulative principles which are also constitutive.’ Being analytic enables a principle to regulate our knowledge conceptually; in order also to be constitutive of our experience, it would need to be a posteriori, not a priori.

       Kant’s treatment of the nature of organisms in Kt9 provides yet another example of his groping towards the concept of analytic a posteriority. ‘The idea of or­ganic bodies’, he claims, can be established a priori, though only ‘indirectly’, through ‘the concept of a real whole’; yet ‘[r]egarded directly’, or­ganisms ‘can be known only empirically’ [Kt9:21.213(66); s.a. 22.356(115)]. He goes on to explain that we learn what an organism is from our (a posteriori) consciousness of ourselves as organizing (rational, architectonic) beings, then we classify the objects we have organized according to the conceptual struc­tures we impose upon our experience. He calls these structures ‘a priori’; but if the focus is on their conceptual status, he should have called them ‘analytic’.

       The analytic a posteriori status of Kt9’s transitions is even more clear in an earlier passage, where Kant calls the four categorial forms of transition ‘a priori laws ... drawn, not from the elements of physics [which would be syn­thetic] ... but from concepts (to which we subordinate the elements of physics)’ [21.183(59)]. To draw a law directly from concepts is an analytic procedure; to subordinate elements of physics to such a concept can have only a posteriori validity. This, as I have argued more fully in Pa87d, is essentially what takes place every time we name something. When Kant refers to his Tran­sition pro­ject as ‘the general-physiological’ link with ‘a priori conceivability’ [22.189 (51); s.a. 22.191(52)], we should read him as naming a process that confers an analytic a posteriori status on the Transition—a status he assumes without argument to be a priori. Likewise, his claim that caloric ‘is determined for ex­perience’ [21.603(96)] can now be regarded as epistemologically equiva­lent to the way naming an infant establishes a certain concept to determine a person’s experience analytically, yet in an entirely a posteriori fashion. The difference is that this creative function is now expanded to cover the whole of our experience [22.554(89)]: ‘Caloric is actual, because the concept of it ... makes possible the whole of experience.’ As such, Kant’s doctrine of caloric/ether functions as the analytic a posteriori equivalent of what Kant elsewhere calls ‘substance’.

       Kant makes numerous direct comparisons between the God-hypothesis and the ether-hypothesis [see e.g., Kt9:22.128-9(208-9)]. Not only are both regarded as ‘substances’ with a necessarily hypothetical status; both must also refer only to singular realities (one God and one world). We should not be surprised, therefore, to find that Kant has just as much difficulty in assigning an epistemological status to the former as to the latter. The assertion of God’s existence, he tells us, ‘is neither an analytic nor a synthetic proposition’ [22.128 (208)]. The reason Kant is forced to make such vague and inconclusive statements, I believe, is that he never considers the possibility that the status of propositions such as ‘God exists’ is actually analytic a posteriori.

 

4. The Ideal Human: Christ as Philosophy’s Highest Religious End

       Like it or not, interpreters must recognize that the mysterious quality of Kt9 comes not so much from its disorderly, unfinished form—though this does add confusion to the mystery—as to the essentially mystical aim Kant has in view: to describe the one in the many. Along these lines, even Förster acknowl­edges at one point that some of Kant’s theories are related, at least indirectly, to ‘cabalistic ideas’ [Fö93:277, n.105; see Kt9:22.421(184)]. Those who follow the common practice of portraying Kant as a philosopher who synthesized rationalism and empiricism [cf. KSP1:355,383] rarely take into consideration that such a synthesis can be effected only by subsuming both of these extremes under a third term. We are now in a position to suggest that the Critical mystic­ism that has been gradually emerging here in Part Four is this third ‘ism’. For reason-based philosophy and experience-based philosophy can be held together at the most profound level only by a rational experience, based on a ‘believing reason’ [Ak91:73]—i.e., a Critical mysticism. This is the spiritual legacy bequeathed to us by Kant.

       The transcendent Fire of God-in-the-world eventually encompasses every­thing in Kant’s System, forming a panentheism of the profoundest type. The ‘idea of the whole’ that Kant hopes will unify this System in Kt9, complete with the three transitions suggested by Figure XII.1—God to humanity; humanity

 

 

Figure XII.2:

The Unity of Transcendental Philosophy in Kt9

 

to the world; and (combining the first two) God-and-the-world to humanity—can be aptly depicted in the form of the flow chart given in Figure XII.2. Note that the role Kant gives to human beings (‘man’) in Kt9 is a direct ap­plication of his conviction that philosophy is essentially concerned with four questions, the first three Critical questions (concerning knowledge, action, and hope) being summarized in the fourth (‘What is man?’).[42] Kant’s repeated references to ‘man’ in Kt9 should be read on one level as a general reference to ‘the human individual as understood in terms of the transcendental conditions set out in the three Critiques’; however, Kant also seems to have a more specific referent in mind—the ideal God-man.

       Kant consistently emphasizes in Kt9 that there can be but one God and one world: ‘it is as little the case that there are many Gods as that there are many worlds’ [22.125(205)]. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that when he seeks to unite these two in humanity, he tends to focus his attention on one man. My central argument in this section is that this ‘man’ can be identified as the highest known expression of the human individual: Jesus, the Christ, who seems to be ever lurking at the back of Kant’s mind [cf. Co67:177-8]. The great merit of this conjecture is that it enables us to under­stand what Kant is doing when he makes odd, almost ‘new age’ sounding statements, such as that God ‘judges me within ...; and I as man am myself this being, and it is no substance external to me’ [Ad20:824(We26:198)]. He is developing his own philosophi­cal interpretation of the Christian view that all human beings are, at least potentially, ‘little Christs’—that is, sibling participants in the wholeness (i.e., perfection) first represented by Christ Jesus, the God-man. This position is already suggested in Kt8:60(54), where Kant paraphrases John 1:1 in such a way that ‘[m]ankind ... in its complete moral perfection’ is presented as existing with ‘the Supreme Being’ from the beginning [cf. Mc86:78]. Since Kant proceeds to depict the ‘archetype’ as the personal embodiment of this perfection, we can regard this passage as an attempt to present a symbolic interpretation of the Christian doctrine of Jesus Christ as the alpha and omega [cf. Rev. 1:8; 21:6; 22:13], the Son of God who makes it possible for every person to become a child of God [see e.g., Rom. 8:16-23].

       If Kant’s hidden intention is indeed to propose a philosophical interpreta­tion of such notions, then it means Galbraith and others are quite mistaken when they charge ‘that Kant’s theology does not have Christ at its centre.’[43] Towards the end of her book [Ga96:184] she affirms that in Kt9 ‘Kant comes closest to realising that the philosophical system which has been the preoccupation of his life, has in fact been grounded in theism.’ She adds, however, that Kant’s ‘tendency to cling to Christianity is entirely absent.’ Insofar as ‘Christianity’ refers to an organized historical faith consisting of specific doctrines and duties, the latter is certainly correct, as evi­denced by Kant’s many existential statements such as ‘[r]eligion is conscientiousness’ [Kt9:21.81(248)]; yet this does not mean he has lost his tendency to cling to Christ as an existential ideal. Nor should we take this to mean Kant was previ­ously unaware of his System’s theocentric orientation. For the notable absence of any doctrinal affirmations in Kt9 does not imply that Kant has given up the beliefs he affirmed in Kt8; it only means he sees no more need to repeat those theories in this metaphysical context than he does in the case of the many doctrines of the theoretical and practical Critiques that are also absent.

       That Kant’s entire philosophical System culminates in this ‘one man’—that is, Kant himself, and each of us, as representatives of the ideal God-man—can help us to understand an aspect of his philosophy that might otherwise cause undue confusion and/or concern. As Cooke observes [Co88:313], ‘Kant thinks about the self in a way very similar to the way he thinks about God.’ For example [315], the subject in itself, like God, ‘is not situated in time.... [I]t is a timeless acting uncaused cause.’ Kant thinks of God as well as the self [317] as ‘a simple, unchanging, timeless, spontaneous agent that produces effects in the spatio-temporal world without itself being influenced or determined by the spatio-temporal world.’ That ‘Kant can speak grandly of the self as lawgiver to nature’ [320] is perhaps less surprising when its direct correspondence with God is taken into account. ‘Starting with a Godlike notion of the self can, over a period of time, lead to the idea that the self really is God.’ Here [322] Cooke is thinking specifically of Kt9 as Kant’s attempt to bring his long-term tendency to its final culmination. We are now in a position to see this as quite accurate, but only from the specific standpoint of judicial metaphysics. Cooke regards such an implication as casting doubt on the religious significance of Kant’s System. Yet this is only because he pays inadequate attention to the para­doxical nature of Kant’s overall conception of the God-man rela­tion. For as we saw in V.1, God is also transcendent and fundamentally differ­ent from us [see e.g., Fig. V.3]. Cooke does acknowledge [322] that God is ‘distinguished from human selves in so far as God is a purely rational agent, while human selves are also sensuous.’ But he fails to recognize the ultimate significance of this crucial difference; for this enables Kant to avoid a complete identi­fication between God and humanity. Instead, the latter functions as the principle of synthesis between God and the world.

       If Kant is referring cryptically to the ideal God-man (the ‘Christ’) whenever he refers to ‘man’ as the synthesis of God and the world, to what extent is he also thinking of human beings in general or of ordinary human individuals? We can answer this question by comparing Kant’s treatment of ‘man’ to his treatment of ‘experi­ence’ in Kt9: ‘There is only one experience, and, if experi­ences are spoken of ..., ... what are meant thereby are merely perceptions ...’.[44] If this ‘one experience’ corresponds to the perfection of humanity in the person of Christ, then each of us in our attempts to live like Christ would correspond to the status of ‘perceptions’. As we saw in VII.2.B and VIII.2.B, we should each therefore endeavor to make ourselves a living example of this ‘divine man within us’ [Kt1:597]; and as long as faith in the historical Jesus helps us reach that goal, rather than hindering us—as it would for anyone who regards Jesus as the only possible instance of a human being who exhibits God’s nature—such faith is quite compatible with Kant’s System. Thus, he expresses his entire argument in a nutshell as follows [Kt9:22.131(209)]: ‘I am a principle of synthetic self-determination to myself, not merely according to a law of the receptivity of nature, but also according to a principle of the spontaneity of freedom.’ Here again, the ‘I’ refers to the ideal human as the synthesis of God and the world.

       Kant says of the three metaphysical ideas that when we idealize God, the world, and humanity by regarding them as ‘archetypes’ (i.e., noumenal objects of hypothetical knowledge), we must keep in mind that we can never know for certain if they actually exist [Kt9:21.51(242); s.a. 21.33(236); 22.128-9(208-9)]. This reference to the ideas as archetypes is reminiscent of step five in systemr, where the ‘archetype’ refers to the ‘personified idea of moral perfection’ [see VIII.2.B], and suggests that Kant’s repeated use of the term ‘man’ in Kt9 should be read as being not merely equivalent to ‘the human race’, but on a deeper level, as a reference to the ideal human person. For Christians, that person is Jesus. The Christian reader of Kt9 can therefore safely read this text (as I believe Kant himself would have regarded it) as arguing not that every human individual is a real expression of the mystical union of God-and-the-World, but that this function is fulfilled by the most authentic man-in-the-world ever to live, the person who came to be called ‘the Christ’. To be true to Kant (and perhaps also to the Bible) we must add, however, that every true follower of Jesus’ Way can also be regarded as a participant in (and so also, an example of) this mystical union. The Christian reader, therefore, need not reject Kant’s System on the grounds that it leaves insufficient room for Jesus to occupy a central role in human salvation. Being a philosophical System, it rightly leaves open the question of which individual(s) make(s) the archetype real. But it does not disallow Christians from placing faith in Jesus as the one archetypal Person in whom the metaphys­ical union of God and the world have become a reality on earth. If anything, Kt9 encourages such faith, by showing how it is metaphysically possible.

       This, then, is the ultimate philosophical transition, the transition from an abstract, reflective standpoint (either theoretical and world-oriented or practical and God-oriented) to a concrete, existential standpoint wherein one intuits (immediately experiences) God in the world and the world in God. Philosophy, as Plato pointed out so long ago, begins in wonder and thereby gives birth to reflection and logical reasoning; but its proper end lies not in a theoretical un­derstanding of ideal ‘forms’, but in a mystical experience of the oneness of all that is. This end, as we have seen, is the literal purpose (the telos or ‘goal’) of human reason, even though it is also reason’s symbolic death (its termon or ‘boundary’).[45] Thus, what we might call ‘Kant’s Socratism’ must be viewed, following Velkley, as ‘an inversion of Plato’s’ [Ve85:102], for ‘the philoso­pher’ in Kant’s ideal [104] ‘shows us how little we need in the way of theory to attain our ends.’

       Immediate experience, as the end or goal of all philosophy, is indeed phi­losophy’s death; for here we come face to face with what Kant calls the ‘funda­mental relations’ where ‘philosophy has no business any more’ [Kt15:117]. Just as reason has its birth in the unknowable, transcendent womb of the thing in itself, so also must we now acknowledge that it dies in the supra-rational im­mediacy of an individual’s inward experience of God. That Kant was himself a closet mystic is therefore, despite its strangeness,[46] the inescapable conclusion of our study, for only in light of this awareness can his System be viewed as truly complete. The ‘death’ of reason is lamentable only when the roles of the unknowability of the thing in itself and the mystical awareness of immediate experience are interchanged: the rationalist, believing knowledge of the thing in itself can be obtained, mistakenly regards the begin­ning of philosophy as its end; and the empiricist, believing experience can never be immediate, mistakenly regards the end as the beginning. Critical mysticism is the proper acknowledg­ment of our theoretical ignorance at philosophy’s birth and of our judicial ig­norance at its death, combined with the recognition that all our knowledge arises only between these two extremes. This places definite lim­its on the Enlighten­ment’s naive trust in the all-sufficiency of reason, balancing its ‘sapere aude’ motto with a corresponding ‘non sapere aude’: ‘have the courage not to know’,[47] but to experience—i.e., to let reason die in the imme­diate experience of God, in the hope that it will rise again with wisdom[48] and holiness.

       Kant mentions on several occasions the salto mortale, the ‘death leap of human reason’,[49] referring to the fanatic’s tendency to treat unjustified specula­tions about the transcendent realm as if they were certain truths [see AVII.1]. Such a practice is philosophically disreputable when it is purely speculative; what Kant does not fully acknowledge is that, as Kierkegaard later argued, such a death leap may have a profound philosophical justification when taken instead on the basis of genuine existential awareness. This philosophical death of reason is not ‘the euthanasia (painless death)’ that Kant says results from hedonism [Kt6:376-7]; rather, it is the painfully self-conscious death of a suffer­ing servant. As we saw in IX.2, the heart of the Christ-love that characterizes the ideal human being is not pleasure and inclination, but suffering and (if necessary) death. Likewise, we can now see that Kant’s entire System acknowl­edges a fundamentally tragic element in the human situation: like Tantalus, we are constrained to seek after the unconditioned (e.g., as the highest good in systemp), in spite of the extreme unlikeliness of ever attaining it. Yet this is a tragedy not without significant rewards for those who are willing to endure it; for as Peccorini observes [Pe72:65], ‘one feels prouder of being a man after having accompanied Kant through his painful, but most rewarding, critical journey.’ As Goldmann puts it, ‘the critical philosophy [is] one of the great expressions of the tragic vision of the world, ... a “metaphysics of tragedy”.’[50] Thus, when Kant makes statements such as that an appeal to the supernatural implies that ‘all use of reason ceases’ [Kt8:53(48)], we must not rush to assume he is disapproving entirely of reason’s death [e.g., Ga96:77; see AVII.1]. Kantian reason is an ‘organ’, a living substance that has both a beginning and an end. An appeal to the supernatural is only damaging, therefore, when it comes too soon and would put philosophy to death before its appointed time. (The details of this kairos will be examined in KSP4.)

       Critical philosophy on its own (i.e., apart from the corresponding meta­physical works) promotes a balanced view of religious life that is not so ex­plic­itly ‘tragic’. Despland aptly expresses this balance in De73:269: ‘The mature form of Kant’s understanding of religion emphasizes the finitude of our facul­ties [cf. Kt1], the moral maturity of the religious man [cf. Kt4], and his confi­dence in a gracious Providence [cf. Kt7-8].’ The tragic as an aspect of this life comes into full view only when we discover that our immediate experience of God cannot take the place of our own struggles for knowledge and virtue. This contrast between the judicial and the practical ways of dealing with God is neatly captured by Smith’s claim [Sm68:19] that ‘God is in one perspective [the judi­cial, as in Kt9] a religious solution and a philosophical problem, and in another [the practical, as in Kt4] a philosophical solution and a religious problem.’

       Philosophy’s highest religious end is to pave the way for an experience of this mystical center. The promise it gives is that, out of reason’s death will spring a new life, a new awareness of the proper way of relating our reasoning to the world we inhabit. In particular, wisdom and holiness manifest them­selves as the twin ideals that can be realized only when this religious death has been ex­perienced. Wisdom is the spir­itual fulfillment of science (i.e., knowledge), just as metaphysics follows critique, and is especially the goal of the meta­physics of nature [see e.g., Kt9:21.156(255)]; holiness is the spiritual fulfillment of humanity’s political history (i.e., action) and is the goal of the metaphysics of morals. But wisdom and holiness are not possible apart from a fundamental recognition that these ideals ultimately belong to God alone. As Kant affirms in Kt9:22.38(177): ‘Wisdom is the highest principle of reason.... Only the supreme being is wise.’ Likewise, as we saw in V.4, Kant consistently regards holiness as an attribute of the divine.

       The humility that fills anyone who truly becomes aware of this ‘religious feeling’ prepares us ‘to be educated by God, ... to obey and respect a higher moral authority than our own current insights and those of mankind.’[51] Despland argues that this step, far from entailing a merely agnostic admission that God’s existence is possible, requires an active worship of God:

 

... this feeling becomes further characterized as a sense of the holiness of God. The God who is an educator of mankind is presented as a rational idea and as a necessary postulate. This should not obscure the fact that for Kant he is also—and he is primarily—the highest reality before which all knees bend. [De73:267]

 

Kant’s claim in Kt4:11n that ‘wisdom and holiness’ are ‘fundamentally and objectively identical’ is obviously untrue from the standpoint of the three Critiques; it must rather be interpreted as a claim about the union of knowledge and action in immediate experience, where knowledge and action are ultimately unified in the God-man, the empirical realization of both holiness and wisdom. This may well be what Kant has in mind in Kt8:83-4(78) [q.i. VIII.4] when he enigmatically calls the teachings of reason ‘holy’ and those of Christ, ‘wise’.

       We saw in V.3 [s.a. KSP1:IX.3.B and AA18:713-4,485-6] that the God who is transcen­dent in systemt and immanent in systemp is paradoxically both tran­scendent and immanent in systemj (and so also in systemr). The mystery we are now faced with is that at the center of Kant’s entire System, God is in a sense neither transcendent nor immanent. Contrary to interpreters such as Ward, who claims that ‘God remains a remote and impassive being for Kant’ [Wa72:66], the God of Kt9 is the God of immediate experience—a realm where all distinctions (like language itself) ultimately break(s) down. Here God is no mere (transcendent) ‘idea’, and even a more positive (immanent) term such as ‘postulate’ does not do justice to the experience Kant describes. Rather, what Kant alludes to is a mystical feeling or intuition that somehow corresponds to the intellectual intuition of God’s own nature [see V.1; cf. Gr34:lxi], yet avoids contradicting any Critical principles by virtue of the fact that it produces nothing tangible in the way of knowledge (theoretical or practical). What it produces is the far more important (yet ineffable) respect for life (and by extension, for both oneself and one’s fellow human beings), for nature (and by extension, for both the universe and the products of human culture), and for God that characterizes all of Kant’s thinking, yet finds its ultimate expression only here. Anyone who reads Kt9 as part of a mono-perspectival philosophy of science is bound to regard it as contradicting Critical principles. But once we see it as developing from a new perspective a philosophy of wisdom, the problem of alleged inconsistency falls away. The conclusions of Kt9 are not treated as knowledge claims (‘kat’ ’alhqeian’), but as holistic claims worthy of analytic a posteriori belief (‘kat’ ’´anqrwpon’) [Kt69:306].

       Kant’s System can now be seen to revolve, like a hurricane, around a ‘dead center’, a place of peaceful calm that has to be experienced in order to be believed—especially for anyone who is being tossed about on the stormy sea of philosophical speculation. The Critical philosophy is to function like a set of navigational tools that can guide the sailor safely into this place of rest. Here at the heart of the System, reason lies mysteriously dormant, resting from all the mighty endeavors that seemed so important just moments before. The philo­sophical ‘sailor’ who is fortunate enough to locate this ‘end’ of Kant’s theocen­tric meta­physics will be empowered to venture back out into the stormy ‘spiral’ of human reasoning, with a newfound appreciation of the moral order that makes nature, art, and even theoretical knowledge itself worthwhile [cf. Fig. III.8; s.a. Kt7:482].

       Kant makes a similar point using a rather different metaphor in Kt6:441: ‘Only the descent into the hell of self-knowledge can pave the way to godli­ness.’ (Tracing this vivid maxim to Hamann, Collins [Co67:140] says Kant regards it ‘as the first condition for orienting myself and humanity toward God, in the religious relationship.’) If reason dies when it reaches the latter and ascends to ‘heaven’, if in so doing we have reached the still point at the mystical center of the Critical storm, then what is there to look forward to in the remaining two volumes of Kant’s System of Perspectives? What we will find is that the metaphysical ideas of the world (freedom) and the soul (immor­tality) bring us face to face with the same paradox we have met in our examination of Kant’s Critical religion, but in new forms. The realms of science and political history, respectively, will be the focus of our study in KSP3 and KSP4. There we shall find that Kant is transcending the religio-philosophical mandate of Socrates’ ‘know thyself’ and replacing it with the maxim ‘cultivate thyself’.[52]

       Friedrich expresses a similar point by saying [Fr49:vii-viii] ‘Kant’s philos­ophy, existentially speaking, revolves around “peace” and not around “cogni­tion.”’ That this peace is an allusion to what the immortal soul can look forward to after the body’s death is suggested by Kant’s admission in his ‘Perpetual Peace’ essay that its title refers to ‘a satirical inscription on a Dutch innkeeper’s sign upon which a burial ground was painted’ [Kt32:343]. Once we recognize that Kant’s concern with politics and history extends beyond the grave, to the afterlife, the problem Yovel points out becomes all the more intense: ‘How can a bridge be built between the history of reason and empirical history?’[53] Yovel argues that because the ‘supreme end round which [Kant’s] system is organized is the supreme practical end’ [Yo80:20n], therefore ‘the historical ideal is placed not just within [Kant’s] system, but in fact at its “architectonic” center.’ As we shall see in KSP4, this—though something of an exaggeration (for history as such is not at the System’s center, but rather the immediate experiences out of which all history is woven)—is accurate insofar as it highlights the unexpectedly historical focus of many of Kant’s later writings. Moreover, when we adopt the practice of viewing history as God’s way of educating humanity, ‘[t]he person of Christ’, as Despland affirms, ‘becomes ... the surest ground of hope.’[54]

       Etymologically, the word ‘transcendental’—the name Kant chose to denote the overall Perspective of his entire System [see KSP1:II.4]—is closely related to the word ‘trance’. Whereas ‘trance’ means ‘pass away’ (as in death, or total loss of consciousness) and ‘transcendent’ literally means ‘climb over’ (e.g., a mountain), ‘transcendental’ refers to the boundary that determines what is to be transcended. The similarity between these words is more than accidental; for Kant’s Transcendental Perspective, as we have seen, is the outworking of a new ‘dream’ to replace the old dream of speculative meta­physics and fanatical mysticism. This new dream requires us to ‘climb across’ (trans-cend) the ‘valleys’ of our experience to reach the ‘mountains’ of our metaphysical ideas, yet without losing our awareness of who we are in the world we inhabit—thus only allowing us to travel up to the boundary itself. This is possible only because the Copernican ‘compass’ provided by the philosopher’s use of architec­tonic logic enables us to live in the ‘hypnogogic trance’ of Critical mysticism—a state of mind that enables us to stay ‘awake’ to the world of our experience without losing our awareness of the mystery and meaning of the ‘dream’ world that lies just beyond the reach of our cognitive fingertips.[55]

       Is the death of all philosophy in the mystical awareness of the God-man dwelling within us a mere tragedy? Or is it the realization of philosophy’s true end? A decisive answer to this final question is suggested by comparing it with a parallel issue Kant addresses far more directly: the fate of ecclesiastical faith. As we saw in Part Three, Kant accepts that churchly structures serve a legiti­mate purpose; but once their purpose (conveying moral-spiritual enlightenment to those who would otherwise have gone without it) has been served, all such structures are best put aside. Their death is not something to be lamented, but a natural developmental process we should accept as promoting the highest good.[56] In a similar fashion, philosophy too should not be regarded as an end in itself, to be kept alive at all costs, but as a means to the furtherance of human develop­ment towards our proper end. Lest this realization lead philosophy to a pre­mature closure, however, we must also recall that Kant thinks this ideal end, where all ecclesiastical faiths (and all philosophies) will become use­less appendages thanks to a new level of human self-awareness, is still far off in the distant future of mankind. Once we have attained the insight that is its goal, philosophy as such may be laid to rest. In KSP4 we shall examine in detail the political structure of this ideal future and the path that will lead to it. Here we may affirm that philosophy, like ecclesiastical faith, retains its value for the time being. We are still so far from the point when humanity can safely live continu­ously in the moment of immediate experience that we, as much as Kant, must be satisfied if we can experience a few tantalizing glimpses of our final destiny.

 

  [1].  See e.g., Kt9:21.61(245); 22.86(191); 22.97(195). In one of his most suggestive uses of the quoted phrase [22.193(53)], Kant says ‘the transi­tion ... is a product of the idea of the whole, in the thoroughgoing, self-determining intuition of oneself.’ As we shall see in XII.4, this ‘idea’ is intimately connected with self-knowledge as an experienced reality (i.e., an ‘intuition of oneself’).

  [2].  Kant placed most of his notes on this subject in the first of Kt9’s twelve fascicles. The recent translation of Kt9 by Förster and Rosen ignores the order of Kant’s fascicles and arranges the notes by topic instead. Förster justifies this on the grounds that the order of the fascicles represents nothing more than the approximate reverse chronological order Kant wrote them in. Thus, the translators unfortunate­ly place Kant’s discussion of God last in their translation, rather than first. By giving the impression that the discussion of God was a mere afterthought or appendix, they surreptitiously lend credence to Förster’s own theory that Kt9 is mainly about Kant’s recognition of the need to write a transition between Kt3 and physics [see XI.1].

  [3].  See Ke23:627-36. In a 1794 letter to Kant [AA11:491(Zw67:215)] Beck complains that ‘even the friends of the Critique ... don’t know where they ought to locate the object that produces sensa­tion.’ In KSP1:VI I argue that this confusion is due to Kant’s perspectival methodology, whereby transcendental­ly the ‘object’ is the thing in itself, while empirically it is the phenomenon.

  [4].  Kt9:21.99; s.a. 22.77(186). Elsewhere he adds that this ‘intuition of oneself’ [22.11(170)] seems to be immediate, inasmuch as it is totally nonconceptual: ‘The first act of the faculty of representation ... is the representation of oneself ... through which the subject makes itself into an object ...: that is, representation of an individual’ [22.43(178); s.a. 22.77(186) and Kt25: 28.2.592]. Although Kant does not assign this function to one of the faculties of the mind, it would seem to fit the mysterious power of imagination more than any of the others. Heidegger’s interpretation in He29 would tend to support this conjecture.

  [5].  As Kemp Smith notes in Ke23:618, the ‘fundamental problem’ of the whole Critical System is ‘how      the self-transcendence involved in knowledge ... can be possible. The self can be a knower only if it be a creator.' Thus, Kant suggests a symbolic (transcendental) reversal of Spinoza’s principle: ‘we carry our concept of God into the objects of pure intuition’ [Kt9:22.59(216), e.a.; s.a. 21.22(228)].

  [6].  Sullivan regards this passage as evidence of Kant’s ‘idealist’ reduction of God to human practical reason [Su71:125]. To do so, however, he has to mistranslate ‘gleich’ ('similar to') as if it were ‘zugleich’ ('at the same time'). On this issue, see AIV.4.

  [7].  Kt9:22.82(189). Later [22.353(114)], he makes the same point more cautiously: ‘we have insight into nothing except what we can make ourselves. First, however, we must make ourselves.’ Likewise, he explains in Kt69:299 that ‘we make these objects [i.e., God, freedom, and immortali­ty] for ourselves as we judge the idea of them to be helpful to the ultimate end of our pure reason.’ Such radical statements sound like concessions to idealists such as Fichte; with this in mind, Walsh suggests [Wa67:323] it may be ‘fortunate for Kant that he was not able to get his final philosophi­cal thoughts into publishable form.’ But see note XII.9, below.

                  Webb interprets Kant’s references to self-creativity to be mainly about perfection [We26:181]. For this is the only sense in which God and human beings share this characteristic [184; cf. Ad20:774]: ‘God ... cannot ... create holy beings; only so far as they are natural beings is he the creator of men; as moral beings they are their own cre­ators.’

  [8].  In Kt9:22.113 Kant distinguishes between four types of ‘being': ‘1) A sense-being; 2) a reason-

being; 3) a rational being, of which there can be several [types]; 4) a highest Being in the highest sphere—God—who es­tablishes all rational beings in the unity of moral relations, through the categorical imperative.’ These corre­spond quite clearly to animals, spirits (i.e., purely rational beings such as angels or disembodied souls), humans (i.e., sensible beings who are also ra­tional), and God, and can be mapped onto the 2LAR cross, assuming first-level distinctions between sen­sible (-) and rational (+) and between lower (-) and highest (+), as shown in the figure to the right.

 

 

  [9].  See e.g., Kt9:22.24,34,36,37 and note XI.5, above. That Kant’s thinking in Kt9 was influenced far more by Beck than (as Copleston claims) by Fichte is convincingly argued by Zweig in Zw67:26-31 [s.e. 31n; s.a. De73:314; Gi37:240-2]. Indeed, Kant indicates in a 1798 letter that he had not even read Fichte up to that point [AA12:239(Zw67:250)]—and he may never have done so. In any case, Kant explicitly rejects Fichte’s work ‘as a totally indefensible system’, for it ‘is nothing more or less than mere logic’ [396-7(253-4)]. Nevertheless, Kant does seem to be competing with the early idealists, who shaped what developed into Romanticism, to close a gap that was widely recognized to exist in philosophy. Schleiermacher, for example, asks in Sc55:5 how ‘extremes are to be brought together, and the long series made into a closed ring, the symbol of eternity and completeness?’ In opposition to what he saw as Kant’s over-emphasis on morality, with its drawback of always being ‘manipulating’ and ‘self-controlling’ [29-30], Schleier­macher locates philosophy’s ultimate standpoint in ‘piety’—i.e., in a religious experience char­ac­terized by ‘a surrender, a submission to be moved by the Whole that stands over against man.’ What I am aiming to demonstrate here is that Kant’s final position was not as far removed from Schleier­macher’s as is often assumed. The difference is that Schleiermacher begins where Kant ends, claiming that scientific knowledge and moral action arise out of our immediate experience. Assessing whether Schleiermacher—or for that matter, any of the nineteenth century philosophers—closes Kant’s gap better than Kant himself did is beyond our present scope [see Ba72:306,655-6]. Suffice it to say that if there were enough time and space here in KSP2 for another Appendix, the shortcomings of the nineteenth century responses to Kant would be its most likely topic.

[10].    Kemp Smith believes Kant is making such a denial [Ke23:617]. Copleston’s view is more accurate: ‘We cannot suppose that the human intellect creates its objects by thinking them. Kant never accepted pure idealism in this sense’ [Co60b:205; s.a. 385].

[11].    This is a source of great confusion among interpreters, who wrongly interpret it as evidence that Kant wishes to identify God with human reason [but see AIV.4]. Friedman, by contrast, points out in Fr86b:507 that ‘Kant does not call freedom, God, and immortality facts of reason. They are not immediately present to me.’ On this view, only our awareness of the moral law is immediately present; the ideas have to be inferred from this. As ideas, this is no doubt accurate. However, the reality behind the ideas is also revealed to us immediately. Thus, Kant affirms as early as 1756 that ‘God ... is immediately present to all things, but internally present’ [Kt12:483]—a view that cor­re­sponds closely to numerous passages in Kt9, as when he calls ideas ‘pure intuitions’ [21.79(246)].

[12].    In Kt69:295 Kant explains the relation between the three ‘transcendent ideas’ in a somewhat different (but not incompatible) way: they represent ‘the supersensible in us [freedom], over us [God], and after us [immortality].’

[13].    Only in this sense of absolute opposition, as depicted even more clearly in Figure V.3, is Copleston correct to claim that in Kt9 ‘the World is conceived as dependent on God’ [Co60b:387; s.a. 383]. Kant would not support the claim that the details of our knowledge of the world are directly dependent on our knowledge of God. Rather, Kant’s version of a theocentric orientation treats God as a mystical center around which everything revolves [see KSP1, Fig. IX.2], making all knowledge possible, yet without allowing itself to be known. In this sense, Collins [Co60a:198; s.a. 433] is also correct to say ‘Kant sought to prevent the identification of God’s own being with the natural world.’ However, as we shall see in XII.4, he does regard them as reaching a higher synthesis in the human individual. As Despland puts it in De73:73, nature and Providence are ‘two teleological systems which pursue distinct though related ends.’ Nature’s end is humanity, whose end is freely to choose the end of Providence [cf. Kt7:436]; for ‘God pursues two sets of ends, those pursued through Nature’s plan ... and those pursued through his moral Provi­dence’ [De73:73].

[14].    Kt9:21.104. As we saw in KSP1 [s.e. IV.3 and VII.2], Kant’s use of the term ‘possibility of experience’ is closely connected with his notion of ‘immediate experience’: the former is the latter, viewed as something that might give rise to empirical knowledge. With this in mind, Vleeschauwer’s assessment of Kant’s unpublished essay on progress in metaphysics (i.e., Kt69) takes on added significance. He observes in Vl62:156 that in Kt69 ‘the possibility of experi­ence ... is often represented as the highest task of transcendental philosophy.’

                 Kt69 was one of the first things Kant wrote (c.1791) after completing the third Critique. Significantly, the essay reveals a crucial change of standpoint, displaying for the first time the heightened emphasis on the role of the subject that comes to the fore in Kt9 (and was taken even further by Fichte and Schelling). In Kt69 ‘the whole discussion [revolves] around the living kernel of the synthetic activity of the subject [Vl62:154]. Moreover, as Vleeschauwer explains [165]: ‘The Critical whole in its three parts is raised to the level of philosophy instead of occupying ... the modest place of a preliminary study.’ Here we see Kant treating ‘metaphysics as the most powerful spring of the human personality’ [154], with the proper treatment of immediate experi­ence being its ‘highest task’.

[15].    The text in question, Kt9:21.17(224), appears in the first fascicle; unfortunately, Förster’s translation obscures its early origin by placing it near the end of his subject-organized text.

[16].    Co60b:381, e.a. Since Kant, as usual, follows the pattern of the categories to work out the details of this schematism, Förster is correct in saying Kt9’s purpose is to explain ‘the a priori systematicity of physics’ [Fö89:296]. The problem with Förster’s interpretation is that he seems to regard this as the work’s only (or at least, primary) task. My arguments in this chapter should demonstrate how grossly inadequate such an assumption is.

                  The details of Kant’s systematic transition to physics are not central to our concern in this chapter. Although Kant never settles on a single, consistent account of the ‘moving force’ [Ke23: 612n], Kemp Smith suggests a plausible candidate [611]: ‘In respect of origin, motion is either inherent ... or communicated ...; in respect of direction either attractive or repulsive; in respect of place either progressive or oscillatory; and finally, in respect of filling of space, it must either ... be coercible, or ... incoercible.’ Kemp Smith agrees with Adickes (and many others) in finding such an a priori scheme ‘entirely worthless’ [612] and ‘from the start doomed to failure’ [611].

[17].    Webb, by contrast, highlights such claims as being among the most significant in Kt9. The lan­guage of ‘personality’, he reminds us, was ‘rare ... before the end of the eighteenth century’ [We26: 181], yet in Kt9 ‘Kant constantly ... speaks of God as a “Person” and of God’s “Personality”.’ Personality is a key theme because it is the common factor that unites God and humanity, though in Kt9 Kant often applies such terms ‘to the divine as distinguished from the human spirit’ [183]. Webb refers to Ad20:762-3,766-8,772-6,778,780,819-24,826-8 to support his position.

[18].    Ke23:639; s.a. Gr34:lxviii. Along these lines Kant says ‘the spirit of man’ is ‘a being above the world’ [Kt9:21.42]. Looking at the same relationship from the opposite side, Collins says [Co67: 134-5, e.a.]: ‘A moral believer is one who is ready to accept the personal spiritual reality of God even though we cannot know God’s existence theoretically.’

[19].    See e.g., Kt9:22.64. On Kant’s reference to the ‘voice of God’, Schrader [Sc51a:239n] lists Kt9:21.14,17,21,56,60,113,118,143ff,153,157 and 22.55,106,109,114,124. Webb associates this voice with both God’s transcendence and God’s immanence [We26:82,175].

[20].    Greene translates these Kt9 passages in Gr34:lxvi from Ad20:801,847, and 806, respectively. An important point to note is that Kant says we experience this voice as a transcendental, not a transcendent, reality. Even in Kt9 we have no way of experiencing the transcendent as such.

[21].    Cf. De73:60. Along these lines Despland points out [45; cf. Kt60:18-9] that for Kant nature ‘does not contain the destiny of man. Nature’s role is first of all limited to the task of bringing man to the point where he can and must assert his independence from her.’ This is what I call the ‘birth’ of reason. ‘The plan of Nature’, Despland adds, ‘is to make man a self-governing being.’ This could also be called God’s plan: to nurture human reason towards maturity. My contention is that Kant hoped Kt9 would bring together and clarify this ‘big picture’ that guided his thinking: the God who gives us both nature and reason expects us to use the latter to separate ourselves from the former (and so also, from the instinctual form of God’s voice) in order to hear the moral aspect of God’s voice. Thus Kt9 was to culminate Kant’s philosophy of history by showing how our ultimate hope is in the union of both extremes. In our own experience of self-governing, we come to see the self-gov­erning of God in nature, and ultimately, we see the unity of both in immediate experience—though we can never hope to explain it, since reason dies at this point. Despland is therefore only partially cor­rect to say in De73:46 that ‘A rational man is a man divorced from nature.’ This divorce is final­ized in systemp; what Despland’s comment neglects is the happy remarriage that takes place in systemj.

[22].    Kt9:22.116-7(200). Kant’s stress on God’s ‘omnipotent’ power [s.a. 22.122-23(204-5)] reminds us that Kant’s God is not merely a moral being. For God, ‘with respect to nature, is capable of everything’ [22.127(207)]; as such God is also ‘the highest being in the physical respect.’ I downplayed this aspect of God’s nature in V.2-4 because the practical always has primacy for Kant.

[23].    With this in mind, I claimed in KSP1:98 that Kt9 can be regarded as a ‘Metaphysics of Religious Experience’. Stressing religious experience is important, as Smith puts it [Sm68:11], because it shows ‘that there is a religious dimension to human existence and that this dimension is unintelligible without reference to God or transcendent Being.’ Copleston expounds such a position at some length in Co74, arguing that ‘metaphysics has as its basis an experience which I should not hesitate to characterise as religious’, inasmuch as it requires an ‘initial belief’ in the depen­dence of ‘finite things’ on a transcendent ‘One which is not itself seen’ [12]. Such an experience may have no ‘cognitive value’ [13], however, because [59] ‘if talk about God is basically a way of referring to and speaking of what a man regards as that which discloses itself in certain types of experience, we cannot adequately understand the language apart from the basic experience or types of experiences.’ Copleston describes this type [75] as a subjective awareness ‘of being acted upon, of an intimate uniting and one-ing with a Being immeasurably greater than himself and which is felt to be in some sense the ... ultimate reality.’ His point is essentially Kantian: this immedi­ate awareness may produce a profoundly religious experience, yet it cannot produce empirical knowledge without attaching itself to concepts, which in turn would deprive it of its status as immediate.

                  Flew argues in detail against the objective meaningfulness of religious experience [Fl66:6.7]: ‘The mere fact of the occurrence of subjective religious experience does not by itself warrant the conclusion that there are any objective religious truths to be represented.’ While this is technically correct [s.a. Co74:80], it reveals more than anything else Flew’s own bias for the objective [see AIV.4]. That is, whereas Kant’s System of Perspectives assumes truth comes in a variety of forms, Flew expects anything true to be based in objective fact. Once we recognize that most mystics are fully aware of the subjective character of religious experience and yet do not think this makes it objectively false or illusory, the inadequacy of Flew’s approach becomes apparent. The fact that the objective content of religious experiences differs widely between people in different religious tradi­tions [Fl66:6.6] is not a significant problem for anyone who identifies the truth-bearing quality of such experiences with their subjective form. Flew’s claim that such disagree­ments stem from each cul­ture’s differing set of religious ‘categories’ uses the latter term in a thor­oughly unKantian way; for Kant’s categories refer to the form, not the content, of our experience.

                  The fault, as becomes evident in Fl66:6.16-8, is not entirely Flew’s, for the conservative the­olo­gians against whom he chiefly argues tend to ignore Kant’s revolution by assuming religious experience represents God as an empirically objectifiable being rather than as a transcendentally subjec­tive reality living within each individual’s heart. Only by taking into consi­deration this Kantian view, together with Kant’s further claim that the legitimacy of a religious knowledge-claim is best assessed in terms of its moral-practical usefulness [see e.g., Co74:80-2], can the theist respond effectively to Flew’s most decisive argument, that a religious experience’s ‘built in elusiveness to observa­tion makes it impossible to falsify claims about the presence of God simply by indicating that there is in fact nothing there to be observed’ [Fl66:6.27]. For Kant there is something to be observed—but it is transcendental (not empirical) in form and practical (not theoretical) in content.

[24].    Gr34:lxvi. In the omitted text Greene adds ‘for the first time in his life’—a qualification we saw in X.3-4 to be quite unjustified. Greene’s failure to recognize that this was not a new theme in Kant’s mind, but only one whose proper standpoint had not yet been adopted, leads him to regard this as a radical reversal of his former dependence on the moral proof. Ward [Wa72:60], by contrast, sees in Lectures on Ethics ‘a hint of [Kt9’s] doctrine that God and practical reason are to be identified.’ Quoting from Kt35:(52), he says ‘God is required as the “ground of obedience” to morality. That is, though the understanding can discern what the moral law is, it is God who “imposes upon everyone the obligation of acting in accordance with” the law.’ A further hint can be drawn from Kt6:438-9, where God’s presence in our conscience is portrayed as possibly ‘an actual person or a merely ideal person that reason creates for itself.’ Likewise, in Kt23:401n(179n) Kant says the ‘archetype’ must be ‘made by ourselves’ since it ‘appears personally to us’. As emphasized above [s.a. AIV.4], such comments should be interpreted with Kant’s Copernican Perspective in mind, as not precluding the possibility that God also exists inde­pendently of our ‘production’ of archetypal Presence.

                  McCarthy [Mc86:99] argues against the kind of interpretation I am defending here: ‘The most that one may conclude ... is that ... the moral law is the nearest one comes to encountering the divine. But it is certainly not to be construed as a direct experience of God. To be sure, Kant took pains to deny any kind of such experience, particularly emphasizing the lack of any faculty for direct perception of God.’ I have already explained in X.3-4, however, how a direct encounter with God is possible on Kantian grounds without presupposing any intellectual intuition. The latter would not be an instance of ‘experiencing God’; it would be a Godlike experience. Kant never denies the former, provided the perceptions or feelings of experiencing or being related to God are not regarded as producing knowledge. McCarthy continues [99]: ‘Kant’s understanding of religion ... emphatically excludes ... religious experience ... [as] not practical.’ But this is simply false: claims to have such experiences are excluded only if they have a morally-negative influence on a person. McCarthy goes so far as to claim [99n] that ‘Kant’s God could not appear ..., for there would be no way to recognize him.’ But Kant would never dogmatically state that God cannot ap­pear; he would only warn that we can never know for certain if an appearance is of God. McCarthy is quite right to point out [100] that ‘Kant never entertains the possibility of religious experience ... that might ... play some role in the restoration of the right order of the moral incentives.’ My point is that there is nothing in his System that prevents us from supplementing his theories with such an emphasis.

[25].    In Co60b:390 Copleston portrays Kant as developing ‘a moral equivalent of or analogue to the ontological argument.’ As an example he quotes a statement Kant makes in Kt9:22.109: ‘the mere Idea (Idee) of God is at the same time a postulate of His existence. To think Him and to believe in Him is an identical proposition.’ Copleston says this means ‘that within and for the moral consciousness itself the idea of the law as the voice of a divine legislator is equivalent to belief in God’s existence.’ While there is indeed an interesting similarity here, associating this view with the ontological argument is highly misleading, for the latter is a theoretical argument, whereas Kant’s claims in Kt9 are judicial, relating solely to our existential awareness of the moral law.

                  Sullivan, arguing against a similar view defended by Poncelet, agrees in Su71:129 that in the context of Kt9 such assertions are ‘not an ontological argument at all.’ Against Copleston’s ver­sion of this position, he claims [Su71:121] that the qualifications Kant places on his affirma­tions of God in Kt9 indicate that he is not attempting to prove ‘the existence of God in any tra­ditional sense ..., i.e., “God as an objective reality.”’ Sullivan supports his argument with numerous quota­tions from Kt9, but unfortunately edits his selections in such a way as to give the impression that Kant’s text supports extreme subjectivism more than it actually does. (That Su71 was one of the main sources of Kt9 passages in English translation for over 20 years has contribut­ed, no doubt, to a good deal of the confusion that has existed about Kant’s position.) Sullivan agrees, however, that Kt9’s treatment of God ‘is radically different’ from that of the moral argument in Kt4 [Su71:131]: whereas the latter points to an objectively existing God, the former points only ‘to the knowing and willing subject.’ He inter­prets Kant as moving away from an emphasis on ‘a utilitarian God’ and towards an ‘emphasis on the categorical imperative rather than on God’ [123]: ‘God’s existence or non-existence—in the traditional sense of an independent, supreme substance—is not critical as long as the imperative character of the moral life is preserved.’

                  This interpretation is as mislead­ing as Copleston’s, for it ignores that Kt9 is taking Kant’s Copernican revolution to its proper perspectival con­clusion. True, Kant does not affirm God’s existence in any traditional sense that would correspond to systemt, and his reconfir­mation of his own practical postulates is ambiguous at best; but what Sullivan misses is that Kant is building on these, and thus affirming the existence of God, when he interprets the moral imperative as God’s immediate voice. There is no reason to suppose that in affirming an existential encounter with God through the moral law Kant must be denying the validity of his former arguments. The objective arguments of systemt can never establish anything but the hypothesis of an external God; the moral argument of systemp can only postulate God as a belief that reason needs; this new argument establishes God’s presence as certain and immediate by the very fact that we are rational beings. An ‘objective referent’ is indeed missing, as Sullivan points out [Su71:131-2]; but this is because object and subject are indistinguishable in immediate experience [see KSP1:IV.1].

[26].    See e.g., We26:66; Gr34:lxvi; Co88:321. Some agree with Adickes while disagreeing with his reasoning. Beck [Be60:275], for instance, rejects Adickes’ claim that Kant regards the moral ar­gument as insufficiently subjective [see note XII.27, below]; instead, he thinks Kant rejects it after realizing that it is actually a theoretical argument. Wood effectively refutes Beck in Wo70:171-6.

                  Ward says in Wa72:160 that in Kt9 ‘God becomes either a mere objectification of the moral law within, or the referent for a directly experienced personal being which makes itself felt immediately in the moral law.... Either view would constitute a radical change in Kant’s doctrine of the relation of morality and religion.’ But this ‘change’ turns out not to be so ‘radical’ after all, once we see it as a change of standpoint. Failing to appreciate Kant’s perspectival methodology, Ward goes on to reject the second option, because for Kant ‘a direct revelation of God is metaphysically impossible and morally dangerous’ [162; s.a. 165]. What Ward fails to under­stand is that this is true only if theoretical knowledge-claims are believed to follow directly from such an experience. Provided the experience remains what it is, immediate, such a problem cannot arise.

[27].    Schrader makes a similar point in Sc51a:236-7 in his refutation of the position adopted by Adickes. He reports that ‘Adickes found Kant’s moral argument [in systemp] to be unsatisfac­tory on two counts: (1) that it failed to recognize the personal and subjective character of religious faith; (2) that it involved the introduction of a hedonistic element into Kant’s ethics’ [232; s.a. Si60:cxl]. He rightly denies the validity of both objections. The first ignores the perspectival difference between the practical and judicial standpoints: only the latter needs to take into account the ‘personal’ element in religion. And the second is a misinterpretation of Kant’s argument in systemp [see KSP1:VIII.3]. Adickes’ own dissatisfaction with the moral proof may explain why he was so intent on depicting Kant as rejecting it in Kt9.

[28].    Peters makes the same point in Pe93:98, but does not go on to relate it to a shift in standpoint.

[29].    Nor is he merely ‘stating his inner personal convictions for the first time'; as Schrader rightly observes, this would be ‘trivial', since Kant makes it clear enough in many other writings that he is ‘convinced of the reality of God’ [Sc51a:237].

[30].    Co74:7-8. The phrase ‘religious a priori’ was popularized by Rudolph Otto in Ot50. As Chapman points out [Ch92:476], Otto credits Schleiermacher with the insight of adding to Kant’s first two questions a third, ‘What do we experience in the soul?’ I would argue, however, that Kant already intends his own fourth question, ‘What is man?’, to cover such issues concerning our inner experience. Otto bases much of his thinking on Fries’ attempt to improve Kant’s philosophy by allowing ‘direct access to things-in-themselves’ [496]. Otto believes that in so doing Fries provides ‘a philosophical refinement of Schleiermacher’ [494].

                  Davidovich [Da93b:182-3; s.a. 185] calls Otto’s religious category ‘an immediate awareness of reason.’ As such, it has an obvious affinity with Kant’s view of our immediate awareness of the moral law; the difference is that Kant would never refer to such awareness as a ‘category’, because it is not a knowledge-forming power of the human mind.

                  In response to those such as Otto, who posit a ‘“category” of blind and irrational feeling’ [Wo70:204], Wood points out, quite rightly, that Kant does not ignore such irrational elements in religion, but rather [202] ‘attempt[s] to make a rational assessment of them.’ Wood quotes Kant’s assertion in Kt8:114(105) that this ‘inversion’ is ‘the death of reason’ [q.i. Wo70:204].

                  Noting that in Kant’s writings ‘the religious sentiment is never treated as rendering it non-rational’, Webb claims ‘Kant was ... wrong in identifying the religious with the moral sentiment’ [We26:204]. But this neglects the subtlety of what Kant was trying to accomplish in Kt9. For Kant theology (knowledge of God) and religion (actions in response to God’s commands) must always be rational; but the root experience that gives rise to these thoughts and practices lies beyond reason; it is perspectiveless. This is why Kant continually struggles with the paradoxical character of any attempt to describe this experience. Otto himself recognized that only the base experience out of which religion develops is supra-rational. Thus I agree with Webb’s claim [205] that ‘Kant’s ... own sentiment towards the sublimities and ingenuities of nature really implies the existence of something other than what is distinctively ethical, which is yet capable of arousing the religious sentiment.’ What I disagree with is the notion that Kant was unaware of this point. Kant’s empha­sis on the God-relation as being ethical-for-us does not require him to deny the possibility that God’s hidden nature [see Fig. V.3] may be supra-ethical.

                  Neglecting Kant’s openness to the transcendent in Kt9 (and in a great many other texts), Kim claims in Ki88:367 that ‘the rationality Kant champions is an “immanent” rationality forever alienated from its transcendent object ...; the transcendent does not announce its presence within [the horizons of human subjectivity].’ This may be true for systemt, and perhaps even for systemp, but not for systemj, which is why religion is the true focal point for Kant’s System. Only here do we have access to the transcendent, and only here can the alienation Kim laments be overcome. Yet Kim concludes [367]: ‘The whole philosophy of Kant emerges as a paradox’, as ‘an intellectual panic’ that comes close to Kierkegaard’s ‘absurd’. The problem with this conclusion is that Kim’s poorly defended argument focuses mainly on Kt4 and Kt5. It would be more feasible if it were not for the fact that Kant balances the judicial with other standpoints that are not merely existential leaps. Kim claims that Kant fails to meet the demand of ‘[r]eligious consciousness’ for ‘an intelligible account of the openness of human subjectivity to the transcendent’ [367]. To some extent this may be true; but I am arguing that this is exactly what he was attempting in Kt9.

                  Akhutin expresses much the same point [Ak91:78]: ‘One can approach the meta-physical only as one would approach the meta-logical.’ Kant sees this in terms of ‘the noumenal darkness of the “thing in itself”’ [78] and regards ‘philosophizing’ as ‘preserving the memory of that primordial perplexity which constitutes the root of human existence’ [84]. This tantalizing perplexity is just what Kant is experiencing in Kt9.

[31].    As Sullivan says, Kant’s argument for God in Kt9 is concerned with ‘the experience of the moral life’ [Su71:132], not with its rational basis, as in Kt4. As such, it is a posteriori.

[32].    Akhutin expresses a similar point when he says [Ak91:83] that with the metaphysical ideas, ‘[r]eason is not simply recognizing its own ignorance ...: it perceives ... that the metaphysi­cal is something that sustains its world but is not part of it.’ This ‘perception’ of the transcendent is the main focus of Kt9, though as Akhutin rightly says, we always remains ignorant of it in the process.

[33].    Kant sometimes identifies ether with heat or ‘caloric’ [e.g., Kt9:21.214-5(33-4),21.226(74)], but he elsewhere makes a technical distinction between two kinds of ether: ‘light-material’ and heat-material or caloric [22.214(33)]. On the identity of caloric and heat, see Kt9:22.141(47). Although he explicitly calls ether an ‘hypothesis’ in Kt9:22.193(53), Kant in­sists elsewhere that this underlying material is not ‘merely hypothetical’ [21.226,228(74-5)].

[34].    Kt9:22.138-9(46). At one point [21.583(91)] Kant describes this in terms of a ‘gap’. Though we may be tempted to identify this with the ‘gap’ Kant refers to in AA12:254(Zw67:251) [q.i. XI.1], the latter was a gap in the Critical philosophy, whereas here Kant is referring to a gap in our experience of the natural world.

[35].    Kt9:21.210-1(64). A few pages later he expresses this point by saying ‘our all-producing globe’ is itself ‘an organic body’ [21.213-4(66)]. Kant’s emphasis on organisms [e.g., 22.546-8(84-5)] provides further evidence support­ing my claim in KSP1:III.4 that Kt9 belongs to systemj, not systemt. As we saw in KSP1:IX.3.A, organisms are one of the main topics dealt with in the second part of Kt7. Likewise, Kant emphasizes that the ‘primitive moving forces of matter’ being examined      in Kt9 are all ‘dynamic’, inasmuch as ‘the mechanical are only derivative’ [Kt9:22.239(55); s.a. 22.241(57)]—a distinction that also suggests Kt9’s closer association with the dynamical explanations typical of Kt7.

[36].    Kt9:21.310(25). That Kant’s focus on understanding the significance of ‘living forces’ in nature marks a return to the theme of his very first publication [Kt40] is a neat bit of symmetry that is typically overlooked by commentators. Likewise, his doctoral dissertation [Kt44] consisted of reflections on fire, a topic that comes up again in Kt9. With respect to his early interest in natural philosophy, just as in the case of his early interest in philosophical theology [see e.g., note XII.11], Kt9 therefore brings Kant’s philosophical life’s-work full circle with the ripened fruition of a Critical mysticism that has a physical as well as a spiritual side, aptly reflecting the dual interest of his youth.

[37].    Kt25:113 (Pölitz edition), q.i. Pa02:262n; s.a. Kt19:409-10. Panentheism differs from pantheism in the crucial respect that it does not merely identify God with the world, but views God as present and participating in every aspect of the world, but ulti­mately transcending it [see e.g., Kt9:21.18 (224)]. The importance of this distinction can be illustrated by noting Jaki’s use of Kant’s claim ‘I am God! [Ich bin Gott!]’ as evidence of ‘Kant’s gradual shifting into pantheism’ [Ja81:33,224]. Jaki rejects Kant’s starting-point at the outset [8] and shows no awareness of the principle of perspective, so it is not surprising that he takes such a comment as a shift in Kant’s position. In fact, as we have seen, the comment in question, and many others like it in Kt9, are simply Kant’s extreme way of expressing his existential confidence in the presence of God in himself and in all that is. (For a thorough critique of Jaki’s treatment of Kant, see Pa87c.)

[38].    Kant’s tendency in Kt9 to talk about space and time together (e.g., as ‘one space and one time’ [Kt9:21.227(74); s.a. 21.549(80),22.416(182)]) seems closer to Einstein than to Newton. The extent to which Kant’s philosophy can serve as a foundation for the former as well as the latter will be examined in the third volume in this series, Kant’s Critical Science.

[39].    The paradoxical and mystical character of Kant’s transition project is brought out by MacKinnon’s description of mystical perception in general [Ma78:136]: ‘It is by way of discarding the particular experience that the authentic incommunicable is communicated. If mystical experience is properly spoken of as one in which the opposition of subject and object is overcome, it must also be characterized as an experience in which the object is so totally transparent that one must speak of the subject as reduced to the near locus of its transparency.’ Learning to perceive the world with this kind of ‘simplicity’, however, is a skill the mystic gains at ‘the end rather than [at] the beginning and very few achieve it.’ To this I would add that an unconscious participation of such immediate experience comes at the beginning of every human being’s quest for knowledge; but the ability to become consciously aware of what I call the analytic a posteriori feature of human life is indeed an end product rather than a starting point.

[40].    In Kt9:21.581-2(90) Kant seems to support both positions. Although he states on the one hand that the ether proof is synthetic, he also says it derives ‘experience from concepts’, which would make it a type of analyticity, whereby experience is somehow ‘contained in’ the concept.

[41].    Kt9:21.604-5(97). Kant explains here that to regard caloric as ‘the object of a single possible experience’ implies ‘that its assertion is an empirical proposition.’ Such passages are hopelessly incoherent, unless we recognize that he was attempt­ing to explain something fundamentally paradoxical: the analytic a posteriori. The ‘pain like that of Tantalus’ [see XI.1,4 above] was caused by Kant’s insistence on binding himself to the chains of the a priori [see e.g., Fo95:99-100].

[42].    See note III.5. Similarly, Collins claims in Co67:93-4 that ‘the theme of man in the world ... is not peripheral but the founding principle of philosophical inquiry itself.’ The fourth question thus represents the innermost revolution in the spiral of transcendental philosophy, as shown in Figure III.8.

[43].    Ga96:v; s.a. IX.4, above. Likewise, McCarthy [Mc86:101] claims Kant’s ‘reworking of this central Christian teaching [i.e., the trinity] means the dismissal of Christocentricity as traditional­ly understood. Yet the example of Christ will be at the epicenter of moral-religious thought.’ This subtle ‘yet’ makes McCarthy’s comment a much more accurate rendering of Kant’s position. For Kant does reject the traditional view—or to be more precise, he leaves it conspicuously undefended. But he does not do away with Christocentricity altogether. For Christ remains as an ideal example (i.e., the ‘archetype’ of all examples) here at the ‘dead center’ of his entire System!

[44].    Kt9:22.661(98); s.a. 22.104(198). Note the striking similarity of form between the statement quoted here, repeated frequently throughout Kt9, and Kant’s claim in Kt8:107(98) that ‘There is only one (true) religion; but there can be faiths of several kinds.’ This supports my claim that Kt9 is an extension of the same standpoint adopted in Kt8, the judicial, only applied now to metaphysics.

[45].    This understanding of the ‘birth’ and ‘death’ of reason is filled with ironies. First, the Critical System was born out of the generating seed produced by Kant’s analysis in Kt18 of Swedenborg’s alleged communications with people who had died (i.e., departed spirits). Second, Kant was only able to witness the birth of (most of) his System when he was on the verge of death (i.e., entering old age). And third, Kant himself passed over into the realm of departed spirits (if such a realm exists) before he was able to complete his elaboration of the death of his own System.

[46].    This conclusion sounds strange not because there is a huge volume of literature providing evi­dence against it, but simply because the opposite conclusion is often repeated as if it were so obvious as to be beyond the need for support. Thus, when considering Kant’s view of God in Kt9, Macquarrie notes a similarity to a view expressed by mystical writers [Ma90b:431n], then quickly and dogmat­ically adds: ‘But Kant was no mystic.’ Wood says Kant ‘had no patience at all for the mystical’ [Wo92:414], and calls a suggestion to the contrary ‘absurd’ [Wo96:331]. But as Sewall pointed out             a century ago [Se00:32]: ‘It all depends on what is meant by the [term] mystic. Truly the whole idea of freedom is with Kant a mystic one.’ Kant’s use of this term, of course, is extremely one-sided [see e.g., Kt1:882]. The many undefended denials of Kant’s mystical tendencies [see X.2 and notes X.7,18; s.a. Bu84:83 and Co60b:184] are therefore unjustified [but cf. Jo97:31 and Gr34:lxxvii; Gr78:77].

[47].    Although self-knowledge can be regarded as the fruit of Kant’s Critical mysticism, this know­ing ignorance is its root. This is at least part of what I have in mind by coining the term ‘philopsychy’ (literally, soul-loving): an approach to philosophical ignorance that regards psy­chological self-knowledge as its choicest fruit; and an approach to psychological self-knowledge that acknowl­edges philosophical ignorance as its root. For examples of these two approaches, see Pa97 and Pa00a, wherein I develop a kind of Critical mysticism—though without using the term itself.

[48].    Hegel’s critique of Kant is based on the assumption that such a limitation of reason is the mark of philosophy’s ‘failure’ [Fr86b:521]; but as Friedman rightly observes, ‘Kant sees it as wisdom.’ This is because ‘Kant speaks of a human and not an absolute standpoint.... While reminding me of the unseen[, reason] restricts my knowledge to the seen.’ In this respect, Friedman observes [522], ‘Kant’s position is strangely Socratic.’ Both great philosophers affirm their ignorance while remaining faithful to their principles—though in the end ‘Socrates falls back on myth.’ Some would regard the theological orientation and religious end of Kant’s System as an indication that Kant follows Socrates in this respect as well; but I believe Kant’s defense of the Transcendental Perspec­tive makes a significant advance on Socrates’ highly suggestive but ultimately mythical approach. In any case, Friedman’s conclusion, that Kant’s philosophy ends not in ‘hypocrisy’, as Hegel claimed, but ‘in humility’ [522], is surely valid. Indeed, it is the key to Kantian wisdom.

[49].    Kt8:121(111); s.a. 174(163). The footnote [121n(111-2n)] illustrates the proper response to rea­son’s death: Kant reinterprets the doctrine of predestination as a deep trust in the judgment of the timeless, ‘All-Seeing’ One. This affirmation of reason’s ‘death leap’ supports Ronald Green’s claim that this is one of the several ways Kierkegaard develops themes first raised by Kant [Gr89:403-5].

[50].    Go71:170. Note the stark contrast between this view of systemp and the view that portrays it as an unsuccessful attempt to transcend the limits set by systemt. In Kt4 as here in Kt9, there would be no tragedy if Kant were not so careful to avoid making pretentious claims about having attained something that we humans can never succeed in attaining. As Kwan puts it in Kw84:286, ‘matured morality is always tragic!’ While this sense of the tragic, as a practical ‘process of self-ennoble­ment’ [286], is a suitable description of the first three stages of systemp, the fourth stage (with its postulation of God and immortality) seems at first to remove the tragedy from living the moral life.

[51].    De73:267. In Kt8:113(104) Kant says religious feelings can result from ‘the operation of the moral law which fills man with fervent respect and hence deserves to be regarded as a divine com­mand.’ This respect is directed towards the divine commander: ‘and the lawgiver is God’ [Kt9:22.106].

[52].    This interesting suggestion comes from Raschke [Ra75:227], who relates it primarily to Kant’s philosophy of history. Unfortunately, Raschke writes as if history replaces God for Kant [225-7]. This, as we shall see in KSP4, is a serious misconstrual of Kant’s intentions. A more defensi­ble view of the role of political history for Kant is that human destiny is the key to under­standing in what sense human nature is ‘good’. (This is especially true in light of the final step in systemr: humanity somehow becoming well-pleasing to God.) A student of mine, Cheng Kwan, pointed this out to me in 1988, adding that in this respect Kant and Confucius are very similar.

[53].    Yo80:21. Yovel goes on to opine ‘that Kant does not and cannot have a sufficient answer’ to this question. I shall argue in KSP4, by contrast, that the principle of perspective is itself the bridge that enables us to recognize how rational history and empirical history fit together. I hope also to have an opportunity to compare and contrast Kant’s philosophy of history with Hegel’s—the two having ‘a close affinity’ in spite of their differences [Yo80:11,23-5]. Whereas Kant moves from the transcendental to the empirical, Hegel’s thought flows in the opposite direction, with concrete empirical facts serving to reveal the transcendental forms of experience.

                  In KSP4 I shall demonstrate how wrong Webb is to accuse Kant of being ‘profoundly unhistorical and individualistic’ [We26:208]. The fact that he also rejects the legitimacy of Kant’s Copernican revolution as a whole [210f] explains why he finds Kant’s transcendental neglect of history so difficult to accept. Webb wants to see Kant taking socio-historical factors into consider­ation within his transcendental philosophy, but Kant’s Copernican Perspective assumes that these two must be carefully distinguished in order for either to be understood properly.

[54].    De73:246; s.a. VIII.2.B, above. Despland earlier explains this point in more detail: ‘in the life of Jesus ... a genuine existential breakthrough took place then and there. The hope in the growth of good on earth became a really live hope only in the Son of God.... Kant began to insist that in his person, through his work in history, Jesus Christ liberated us from an enslavement from which we could not liberate ourselves.’ Despland cites Kt65:43 and Kt8:82-3(77-8) as examples of passages where Kant develops such views.

[55].    In his study of primitive cultures, Duerr observes [Du78:122]: ‘The “dream place” is in the centre, and that centre is both everywhere and nowhere.’ We humans must ‘live an alienated life’, he adds, because we stand between wilderness and civilization. Duerr’s basic insight holds true for Kant’s System as well, though Kant would have chosen other terms—perhaps ‘ignorance’ and ‘knowledge’ —to describe the fundamental existential dichotomy. The point of resonance here is that the Transcendental Perspective arises out of a dream-like center that provides the only reliable access to the speculations that lie at the circumference [see Figure III.8]. This center is the proper ‘end of reason’, as opposed to the attempt of some mystics to have ‘dealings with spirits’—a position Kant thinks ‘would make the use of my reason impossible’ [Kt25:28.1.446(Jo97:18)]. That this dream is fundamentally theocentric [see I.1-3] is confirmed in Kt9:21.7(256) when Kant says that because philosophy aims at wisdom, it is ‘directed toward something founded on God himself.’

[56].    As we saw in KSP1:VIII.3.B, the highest good is one of the key concepts in Kant’s System. I have not emphasized its significance here in KSP2, because it relates more significantly to the idea of immortality (and so, to the political history of the human race) than to the idea of God (and religion). We shall therefore examine its metaphysical implications extensively in KSP4. For now it is enough to note that Kant describes a world ruled by the highest good as ‘a corpus mysticum’ [Kt1:836]—a phrase derived from corpus Christi mysticum, the mystical body of Christ (or church) [Pe93:35-7].

 

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